THREATS TO WITHDRAW ECL’S BENEFITS RETROGRESSIVE – SILAVWE

Lusaka ~ Wednesday, 20 July 2022

By Brightwell Chabusha

The threatening of former presidents with withdrawing their benefits when they engage in active politics is retrogressive and must be done away with in a politically mature Zambia, Jackson Silavwe has said.

Leader of the opposition Golden Party of Zambia explained that at inception the clause was targeted at late president Kenneth Kaunda by late president Chiluba’s MMD regime then to deter the latter from contesting the 1996 general elections and any other future elections.

Mr Silavwe said since then incumbent presidents and their regimes have used the same to whip former presidents “as though the former president is a primary school pupil at an assembly parade.”

He said this in a statement issued to the media today.

“President Chiluba whipped KK with it, President Mwanawasa whipped FTJ and KK with it, President RB was largely silent about it even when President Chiluba actively supported the Patriotic Front then. RB had a big heart,” he said.

“Zambia models it’s politics largely on British and American politics. In these progressive democracies we have former Presidents like Barrack Obama coming out in full swing to campaign for a Democratic candidate like Joe Biden who won the Presidency. In Liberia we saw President Sirleaf Johnson campaign for George Weah who was not even a candidate from her political party because she considered her own candidate unfit to govern after her. George Weah won that presidential election.”

Silavwe said “former Presidents are political animals that cannot be tamed in the way we are currently doing in Zambia.”

He said democracy is about the competition of ideas not about how many people are silenced either by law or physical force.

“It is our considered view that we expunge such a backward law from our statutes and allow Former Presidents to both enjoy their benefits and actively participate in politics, if we so wish to mature as a Democratic Nation.”