The governing party, the United Party for National Development (UPND) has been warned against trying to force loyalty by holding candidates to ransom through the way of withholding their sensitive documents, thereby rendering them unable to exercise their rights to freedom of association or make any other political maneuvers.
Senior UPND member Matyola Innocent says it is worrying to note that all aspiring candidates countrywide who wish to stand on the UPND ticket in this year’s general election were asked to tender in their original NRCs and original professional qualifications at the party Secretariat or offices in the provinces and constituencies where they are; on the basis of proof checking the validity of their documents.
In a statement which is in the public domain, Matyola said to make bad matters worse, information in the grapevine is that everyone who has applied and left their documents at the party’s offices will only get them back after the adoption processes in all the political parties are over, when it would be too late for them to join any other parties of their choice or stand as independent candidates.
Read his full statement below:
Good morning, my fellow UPND leaders and ordinary members.
As you very well know, I believe in democracy and democratic practices as benchmarks of freedoms and liberties of citizens.
Democracy provides space for the competition of ideas and ideologies between individuals as well as between political parties that seek the support of citizens to form government.
It is this embracing of freedoms and liberties that brought the end to a one-party state of the UNIP government under KK in 1991 to usher in the multiparty democracy practices from which the UPND was born in 1998.
In this country people are free to join any club of their choices including political parties of their choices at 11th hour before the general elections if they so wish given their strength if the party they belong to, choose not adopt them. We have many of these examples including the Southern province, the traditional stronghold of the UPND itself.
In this modern Democratic dispensation, all the attempts that are aimed at taking us back to a one-party participatory system or forcing people to support certain individuals and practices that do not serve this country’s long-term objectives MUST be consciously and decisively condemned and opposed by every well-meaning Zambian.
It has come to our attention that all our aspiring candidates countrywide who wish to stand on the UPND ticket in this year’s general elections were asked to tender in their original NRCs and original professional qualifications at our party Secretariat or the UPND offices in the provinces and constituencies where they are on the basis of proof checking the validity of their documents.
From, the word go; since 1964 when this country got its independence, there has never been any department of government, quasi government institution that ever asked any citizen to tender these sensitive original documents in their job hunts let alone certified copies through legal provisional agents such as law firms as well as certified Commissioners of oath.
In the political arena, the practices have been the same where no candidates were ever asked to take sensitive documents such as these to their party Secretariats that do not only have legal constitutional clearance but not even have strong rooms to secure these documents.
The question is, who has given this undemocratic, archaic, destructive, and ill-conceived advice to the leadership of our democratic party, the UPND?
Which legal framework have we, the UPND used to admitting people’s sensitive documents, a practice that was never done by all the parties that ran governments before us?
To make bad matters worse, information in the grapevine is that everyone who has applied and left their documents at our offices will only get them after the adoption processes in all the political parties are over.
Why is this so? What manner of fear is this? This is not only unacceptable but an embarrassment to all us who identify ourselves with the UPND.
If the Pf government had sunk this low prior to the 2021 general elections, was our party the UPND going to form government especially given that a good number of the serving ministers were adopted on the UPND ticket upon being left by the pf and other political parties?
We know for a fact that a good number of the serving MPs and Ministers stand no chance to win this year’s general elections and this undertaking of holding their opponents/ new aspirants to ransom so that they will not only be left from being adopted but will have no chance to democratically decide to either stand as independents or to stand on any other party in this year’s elections because they will not be given their sensitive documents until all the other parties will have finished their adoption process.
Surely, who does that in this time and age?
This is an undemocratic trap and an illegality aimed to kill the party and the democracy we chose to embrace when we ended the one-party state in 1991.
It must be a choice of any Zambian who believes he/ she has substantially invested their resources on the ground to stand as independent or join any party of their choice without holding them to ransom by illegally keeping their documents until they are disenfranchised to participate in the general elections.
Could this be the reason we are so opposed to independent candidates?
This is not what the UPND was defined with since its inception. We should desist from practices that entrench clear dictatorship because such things end very badly against those push them and examples are too numerous to mention. We know of individuals in past regimes who pushed for the amendments of laws they had thought would advantage them but in the end they became the first victims of the very laws they created.
It is wise to take free advice than to go down as examples of the worst people in the history of a peaceful country like Zambia.
As always this is out of love and in good faith from Christian conscience.
Matyola Innocent