By Daily Revelation Editor
It takes reason and honest in life to make a good leader. Majority of our politicians lack honest and reason and this makes them extremely unreliable and dishonest people in society. We say this because our politicians go where the wind blows.
Whether the wind is filled with dust and mud and it gets them dirty in the process, they don’t care as long as their eyes and nostrils are covered.
These are the types of politicians we have in Zambia. People whose ability to reason is seriously in deficient. A few days ago, Mumbi Phiri, a staunch PF member called on Edgar Lungu not to treat Hakainde Hichilema the same way he [Hakainde] is treating him – once Edgar ‘returns’ to power in 2026.
According to Mumbi, Hakainde is not treating Edgar well. She like many others, especially in the former ruling party believe that Edgar and his family are politically being persecuted by Hakainde. It is for this reason that Mumbi wants Edgar to come back to active politics and challenge Hakainde in the next election cycle, 2026.
Mumbi says: “All I can say is that he [Hakainde] has missed an opportunity to be looked at as ‘Mandela’ and my prayer is whoever is coming…that’s why I have called on president Edgar Lungu to come back to politics. He should go to Cabinet [Office] and collect [withdraw] the letter. He is passing through a lot and I don’t expect him to do this to HH when he comes back.”
We find this very laughable indeed. So Mumbi is urging Lungu not to treat Hichilema and Mutinta the same way he is being treated if he ever assumed power again. Of course, Mumbi knows that can’t surely happen, as in Lungu not paying retribution if he ever came back, and we know deep down her heart she doesn’t even believe in what she is saying. That is not how Zambian politics work. Not that it is right, but we have allowed our politicians to normalize that and unfortunately society has normalized it too. We are sure Edgar was even laughing at her for saying what she was saying.
Firstly, we genuinely abhor politics of pursuing successor presidents by their predecessors once in office for purely political reasons. Of course there are times when former presidents will have to be held to account for their time in office, and if they committed crimes the law must pursue them. We are against giving blanket checks to anyone just because they are a former president. The same goes to their families, if those family members erred against the law during the time their relative was a president, they must be followed for breaking the law. But there are also certain moments when incumbents use the same mistakes committed by their predecessors purely for political gain, to weaken them further, nothing to do with seeking justice at all.
In view of the above, it is very difficult to discern the exact situation facing the Lungus in several cases they are appearing before the court for.
However, our main interest is in the sheer hypocrisy by Mumbi. What she has said is like asking one criminal to forgive an accused criminal.
We hasten to say that we shall at all times defend Edgar when we notice that the actions against him by those in government are qualifying of persecution. Edgar deserves his freedoms. However, we feel the right words Mumbi should have told Edgar in order to appear somehow reasonable was to tell him, ‘Ba Lungu I would describe what you are going through as retribution against you because of how you treated Hakainde Hichilema. Please learn from what is happening to yourself so that if you have the opportunity to assume the presidency again, you will not commit the same mistakes you committed when you allowed power to get to your head.’
Everybody remembers how callous Lungu was when in office. Under his watch, Hakainde spent a considerable period of time in custody. He was teargased, his campaign schedules were made as difficult as humanely possible. It was not only Hichilema who suffered this fate, a lot of Lungu’s political opponents had their fair share in police cells and beatings. Anyone out there who remembers Sean Tembo’s bloody head at one of the hospitals after he was beaten by PF cadres? During his time in office, Lungu fell like a tonne of bricks on several media institutions, The Post Newspapers and Prime TV among the many victims.
Instead of serving the public good, state institutions were turned into service hood for Lungu. The reign of cadres who could behave in any which way they wanted became the order of the day.
“Ba Bowman, uyu alelanda ati ba President tabakawine (Minister Bowman this police officer is saying Lungu will not win the elections)?” said one unruly cadre who had been stopped for a traffic offence to a police officer who had stopped him for a traffic offence. The police officer so gripped with fear that he walked away speedily from the cadre.
There is so much we can say about the ills which were committed under Lungu’s reign.
It’s just unfortunate that when the nation thought it had passed that sad chapter on some of these gross violations, however, we see the same things happening now, where opposition leaders keep changing shifts at the police stations. If today it’s Fred M’membe, tomorrow it will be Edith Nawakwi, the other day Bowman Lusambo, Sean Tembo and so on and so forth.
State institutions still seem to operate at the service of the President, and there is nothing drastic that has been done to change their operations. They still remain the same state institutions, ready to be manipulated at any point by the President and those in power.
The Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act for which Hichilema rightly condemned Lungu is still in effect and readily being used against opponents of the President in the same manner Lungu intended it. Over two years, heading into the third year of the UPND administration, Access to information remains a pipedream.
Therefore, since Mumbi still retains hope of a Lungu come back, she would do well to start advising him to do a deeper introspection into how he led the country and upon that deeper reflection, how he hopes to do things differently. She should not play the same usual political games of trying to use the ills seeing in the present administration as a passport for a Lungu come back. Talk is cheap. What Zambians are looking for is action.
If Mumbi doesn’t want Edgar to face the law just because he is her former president that has nothing to do with the law; it is Mumbi’s wish, and the law will not listen to an individual or group of politicians’ wish. If the law sees it necessary to investigate Edgar or his family members including his wife Esther, then let the law take its course.
If the major reason for Mumbi calling on her former boss to come back to politics is to save him and his family from potential lawsuits, that’s absolute unreasonable. Some matters Edgar’s wife is appearing before the courts for are purely family business, where one family member reports the other to the police, and the police investigate and take the matter before the country. Whether it is persecution or not, the courts will have the final say.
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