By Patson Chilemba
We’ve always been confident of victory, but let the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) do their job, says State House Chief Communication Specialist Clayson Hamasaka.
Asked by Daily Revelation if President Hakainde Hichilema was confident that he was heading for victory based on the results that have been announced by the ECZ by press time yesterday, Hamasaka said he was passing through Chilanga at the time of the interview, and saw UPND supporters celebrating.
But he said those who belonged to the opposition were also celebrating in the other parts of the country.
”Well I am just passing through a place in Chilanga and I am seeing people celebrating. Let’s wait for Zambians to decide. It will be extremely wrong to start speculating. There are many places where people are celebrating but I can’t declare anybody a victor,” he said.
However, Hamasaka said they have always been confident of victory from the word go, including now, during the campaigns and in the five years they have been in office.
”We’ve been confident but we can’t declare ourselves victors,” he said.
But asked to comment on the preliminary EU Observer Mission’s report about the uneven playing field in terms of public resources and public media coverage that overwhelmingly favoured President Hakainde Hichilema and the ruling party, Hamasaka said it was not his duty to be posting postures for the opposition.
”If they have no campaign materials do you want me to print for them. I’ve no business on who has no campaign materials. As UPND we used to have materials and even I put in my own personal money. But those guys in the opposition you mean you can’t even just do a photocopy of the campaign materials?” Hamasaka asked.
Asked on the biased public media coverage, Hamasaka responded: “But you (Daily Revelation Newspaper) are also a media.”
Reminded about the state media in which all the Zambians had a stake, despite their bias, Hamasaka said: “These concerns have always been there. We won the 2021 elections. Was the public media with us. Michael Sata, even with the Chanda Chiimba programmes on ZNBC won the elections in 2011 … These guys are operating on their own. We do not interfere.”
International observers monitoring Zambia’s presidential election have raised concerns over reports of intimidation and abductions, after vote counting was suspended for several hours amid violence at polling stations.
Observer missions – including those from the European Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region – on Saturday called for parties to tone down inflammatory statements as votes cast in Thursday’s general election were tallied.
Vote counting was temporarily suspended on Friday following reports of violence against polling staff and the alleged theft of ballot papers. Counting resumed hours later after the electoral commission said the “security threat to the electoral process had been contained”, said Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa, reporting from the capital, Lusaka.
S
amuel Tembenu, a former Malawian justice minister who leads the regional SADC observer mission, said his team “was not in a position to observe the counting and collection of results during the period of suspension”, adding that the mission would address the episode in its final report
Michael McNamara, the chief observer of the European Union’s observer mission in Zambia, said: “It is for the Zambian authorities to outline in full the reasons for the decision-making” behind the suspension. He separately said the vote had unfolded against “a backdrop of constrained democratic space,” citing the advantages of incumbency and what he described as heavily biased state media coverage of the race
Reinhold Lopatka, who led the European Parliament’s observer delegation, said the pause appeared “disproportionate” given that only a small fraction of Zambia’s more than 13,000 polling stations had reportedly been affected.
He said his mission had been told that opposition figures faced intimidation, including from security forces, that some candidates had withdrawn under pressure, and that opposition rallies had been broken up by violence. “Even one loss of life is one too many,” he added
