Hold members of parliament accountable over amendments 

By Daily Revelation Editor

And so despite all the attempts to stop President Hakainde Hichilema from pursuing the constitutional amendments in the manner he had set out, he has now decided that the amendments will be debated on the floor of Parliament as he initially intended.

Last Friday, the President held what he termed as a dialogue meeting with the OASIS Forum, a consortium of credible organisations involving the Church mother bodies; the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB), Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ), Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ), the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ), NGOCC among others. And as he was giving his final remarks following the said meeting, President Hichilema announced that he would have another engagement with the pro-constitutional amendment stakeholders on Monday.

And so it happened that by the end of that weekend, the President had announced that the government was ending all dialogue with the OASIS Forum over their maximalist position over the matter, including demands that that Bill 7 should be withdrawn from the floor of Parliament and a new, inclusive arrangement with proper legal safeguards installed in its place.

The OASIS Forum in reaction to the government indicated that President Hichilema was adamant in pursuing the process he had set himself on, which was hastily arranged and not inclusive.

And so came the Monday meeting, which can best be described as a circus, where the very little known so-called civil society organisations, whose ethnic presentation was properly choreographed, presented what it claimed as its support towards the process. And as opposed to the OASIS Forum meeting which was hidden away from the public eye for the most part, the Monday circus was aired live. Those who did not actually take that arrangement with a pinch of salt, we advise that they have themselves properly checked as the undertones were clearly for all to see. We will just say that anyone who is serious about a national undertaking as serious as the national constitution should actually be having dialogue with groups with a make up such as the OASIS Forum, as opposed to most of those discredited groups we saw during the Monday State House circus.

Not long after that circus, Hichilema received a report from the Technical Committee on the constitution which he had appointed, and indicated that the matter would be debated in Parliament.

Of course we know the political affiliations of the majority members of parliament. Nevertheless, we urge every Zambian to fix their eyes firmly on all the members of parliament, and record how they will behave and vote over this process for posterity’s sake. The members of parliament will need to be held to account for the actions they are going to take which will affect future generations in this country.

It is time we started holding these politicians to account for their actions. Just consider for instance how foolish decisions such as the parentage clause that was introduced under Fredrick Chiluba, just for the purpose of blocking Dr Kenneth Kaunda from seeking public office again affected future generations of Zambian patriots. Consider how the same clause created chaos for the PF for instance in 2014 following the death of president Michael Sata, as the substantive vice-president then, a national patriot, Dr Guy Scott, was bound from seeking the presidency on account of a stupid clause introduced in 1996. It should not be lost on anyone that the person who appointed Dr Scott as vice-president, president Sata, was a key member of that parliament that introduced that parentage clause.

Some might be clapping for Hichilema today as he is driving the country into the abyss; some of out sheer ignorance, some out of sheer partisan and ethnocentric considerations, but will only realise later when they come back to their senses that they supported a stupid thing that will do more harm to the country’s democracy and social cohesion.