Governance Activist Isaac Mwanza has urged Members of Parliament to give McDonald Chipenzi and Mwangala Zaloumis a chance to preside over the affairs of the Electoral Commission of Zambia and prove themselves.
Mwanza said he will write to Parliament and appear before a Parliamentary Committee to support the ratification of Chipenzi and Zaloumis in spite of the divided social media opinion over their appointment.
“Chipenzi has immensely contributed to the growth of our democratic culture by offering dissenting opinions which, at times, has mistakenly been construed as partisan but such opinions and the tolerance the previous regime exercised towards his statements are what has kept our nascent democracy to keep growing,” he said.
He said the fact that Chipenzi had been consistent in his criticism against the injustices perpetrated by Commission in the past, the appointment makes him a good candidate to remedy the injustices the Commission has been committing and continues to commit.
“In the last regime, we have had examples of persons such as lawyer Kelvin Fube Bwalya who had previously been inclined to the Patriotic Front and were appointed to various Commissions but they still went ahead to perform their duties diligently and remained critical against those who appointed them,” he said
Mwanza has since encouraged President Hakainde Hichilema to demonstrate that his appointments are meritorious and part of the process of promoting national unity and healing by widening his appointments to Zambians from all regions who are committed to providing a service to this country without looking at political affiliations or inclinations.
Chipenzi was critical against the Commission during the reign of PF but when the upnd got into the government, we saw a very big shift of him being almost the Commission’s spokesman in praising the Commission under the upnd regime. Even a common person from the street could notice Chipenzi’s biasness in favor of the Commission’s undesirable descions because of his political marriage with the ruling party. His excellency the president may give Chipenzi any other position of the government wing ìf he wants to reward him for having rendered his services to the party, but not a sensitive one like that of the Commissioner of ECZ.