WILL EDGAR UNITE ZAMBIA?

Edgar Lungu. Picture courtesy of AP
ZAMBIA’s sixth president  Edgar Lungu was sworn into office on 25th January, 2015 after winning by a whisker the snap poll caused by the death of his predecessor Michael Sata in October, 2014. Edgar takes over an increasingly divided country with voting patterns revealing what can be interpreted as worrying deeply entrenched levels of unhappiness in certain regions of the country with the performance of the Patriotic Front government. Why were Edgar and his Patriotic Front rejected so decisively and overwhelmingly by over 52% of voters?
The Electoral Commission of Zambia said Mr Lungu won 48.3 percent of the vote to his nearest rival Hakainde Hichilema’s 46.67 per cent. A total of 1.67m people voted in the election, of 5.1m registered to vote, with the low turnout of 32 percent.
Hakainde had campaigned on the premise of “Zambia United” having realised that socio-economic exclusion was reversing Zambia’s gains in democracy and affecting strides to turn economic growth into economic and social development. He spent more time campaigning in the North, Copperbelt and Eastern regions of the country; regions that are not his party’s traditional stronghold. His efforts yielded some positive results owing to his extremely good performance in this election. He still got the highest votes from Southern, Western and North Western Provinces despite his efforts to reach out to other regions.
Edgar on the other hand joined the campaign a bit late due to the internal wrangles in his party. Unlike his main rival Hakainde who spent a lot of time trying to convince other regions of the country to vote for him, Edgar did not spend such time in areas where PF was not popular and often had to cancel rallies or turn up very late for a few minutes, the consequences of those actions showed in the voting patterns.
In the heat of campaigns, incidences of political violence and clashes were reported. Edgar at a campaign rally in Central Province warned his opponents that his party and supporters were stronger and could easily beat up the UPND leader and his entire party should they continue to provoke his party.
Now that the campaigns are behind us; the country is in desperate need of a unifier.
Edgar must rise to the occasion and promote unity and tolerance. He needs to act decisively against tribalism and condemn violence and hate speech against tribes perceived as opposed to his election
Political competition is healthy for democracy and no group of people must be punished for exercising their democratic rights to vote for a candidate who they believe represents the best prospects for them.  
CHOICE OF CABINET
The first step in moving towards uniting the country would be to ensure effective representation of all regions in his cabinet. The trend whereby cabinet was filled by individuals from the North of the country to the exclusion of others needs to be put to rest with Edgar.  He is a fairly younger president who should be more accommodative to the ideals of inclusion and social justice.
A NEW CONSTITUTION
The current constitution is a recipe for division and exclusion and needs to be thrown away as quickly as possible. This is a commitment that Edgar made in his inaugural speech. A new constitution would go a long way in ensuring the country had governance systems and democratic institutions that truly unite people and provide effective checks and balances to the government.
EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF THE COUNTRY’S WEALTH
Edgar needs to listen carefully to the sentiments of the people in areas where his party is not popular and ask himself what he can do to ensure that they too benefit fairly from national development effort especially in the area of infrastructure development and agricultural development.
The North Western Province hosts Zambia’s biggest copper mines whose contribution to the country’s GDP and the treasury is enormous. Edgar must put in place measures to develop this province whose population has grown tremendously without any marching growth in social services
AN OLIVE BRANCH
Edgar has won and he takes it all! However he must be magnanimous enough to extend an olive branch to the opposition to join with him in governing the country. This should also extend to members within his own party who were opposed to his candidacy.
Tomorrow we take a look at the economic challenges that confront Zambia’s new President.    

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