THE NAREP CONUNDRUM

EVENTS of the past two days clearly indicate that Elias Chipimo Jnr has unfinished business at the National Restoration Party (NAREP). The party he formed in 2010 has known no rest since his hurried retirement on 2nd September, 2019. Leadership wrangles and bickering seem to be the order of day in the once vibrant and promising party.

Chipimo resigned from active politics to pursue interests in the private sector after acknowledging that he was too rigid with his principals which denied the party the boost that was required to grow the party.
His successor businessman Steve Nyirenda assumed the presidency at an elective convention in November, 2019. The Muvi Television owner went through unopposed for the party presidency. This was after the other candidate Maybin Kabwe withdrew his candidature for the role of Presidency at the NAREP extraordinary convention. Barely nine months after assuming office Steve was kicked out of his position and hounded out of the party at the weekend.
If what we are hearing is true, I can conclude that NAREP has a strange Party Constitution which allows the NEC to fire a party president by a decision of a third of its members. This needs to be re-visited considering that Steve was elected at a party Convention. Steve has since dragged his "former" vice President Charles Maboshe and his team members to court and seeking a stay on his expulsion. This comes a few months after NAREP fired Simataa Simitaa at the beginning of February 2020 after serving for less than a month in the position of Secretary General for allegedly failing to meet some targets and creating a hostile environment in the party.
The party has made an interesting decision to fire Nyirenda in similar fashion, a decision that clearly shocked Steve. Nyirenda seemed to have been getting back some grip after his dismissal at a press briefing flanked by his Vice President Charles Maboshe. Maboshe later u-turned on Steve and accepted that he had taken over the party from Nyirenda. The only similarity between Maboshe and Nyirenda is that they both have a media background, Maboshe a former manager of Radio Christian Voice and Steve the proprietor of Muvi Television. The two have no serious political clout and experience and have so far seemingly succeeded to dwindle the fortunes of the party.
In my blogspot of November 17, 2019 available on http://brucechooma.blogspot.com/2019/11/are-chipimos-shoes-too-big-for-steve.html I observed that Nyirenda was no march for Chipimo in terms of political experience and arguably Chipimo’s shoes maybe too big for him. This means he should prepare for many years of hard work to find his feet in politics.
It has now emerged that there are two camps in the NAREP each seeking to influence the participation of the party in electoral alliances ahead of the 2021 polls. This is one of the factors some allege contributed to the firing of Steve as he had allegedly refused to be in an alliance with the UPND.
There is no evidence to prove that political party alliances can effect regime change in Zambia. Those sponsoring discord in other parties to arm-twist them into an alliance are wasting their time. NAREP should have been focusing on building an alliance with the Zambian people, that is what worked for MMD in 1991 and for PF in 2011.
NAREP must immediately address gaps in their constitution and go to an elective convention if they wish to put an end to their wrangles. They also need to revisit their procedures and policies to ensure proper standards of good governance.
The issues emerging out of the NAREP conundrum give Zambia another opportunity to push for the enactment of a Political Parties Act in line with provisions of the 2016 amended Constitution of the Republic of Zambia. It’s a lesson and case study for all players and political academicians.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Harnessing the untapped youth divident

Each year in Zambia, 240, 000 young people enter the job market and join the thousands already in search of employment. The youth in Zambia have been waiting for a future that seems consistently illusive. Despite Zambia recording over the past decade an economic growth rate averaging 7% this growth has not resulted in improvements in the socio-economic conditions of Zambians. The youth crisis is more real now than at any other time in history and it can only get worse if we do not introduce radical measures. Zambia is a youthful country, with approximately 74 percent of its 14 million total population under the age of 30 (28 percent are 15 to 29 years-old). Annual population growth rate estimates range from 2.4 to 3 percent, and projections indicate a population of 24.5 million by 2030 according to the 2013 Human Development Report At a launch meeting for a youth sectoral analysis report last week, USAID Mission Director Dr Susan K. Brems, introduced a catch phrase, “youth dividen
Read more

Regulating the Zambian church

The government has announced its intentions to enact stronger legislation to regulate the operation of churches in Zambia. According to Ministry of Home Affairs deputy minister Stephen Kampyongo, this move is a response to demands from the church mother bodies and other religious organisations who have expressed concern on the mushrooming of churches and the growing number of clergymen and women who remain unaccounted for in Zambia. I ask the question, since when did churches become a problem? When did they transform from being institutions of hope, morality, integrity and uprightness to institutions of anarchy requiring supervision and control?   Perhaps the government is moving with undue zeal on a matter that they should be leaving to already existing structures such as the registrar of societies and the church mother bodies. The truth is that, as any society grows and develops, it becomes more dynamic and all its institutions evolve and encounter problems. The perceived proble
Read more

Zambia: An elusive access to information law

Image
FREE and open access to public information by citizens is one of the hallmarks of a well-functioning democracy. Zambia like many other peer African countries continues to defer and to an extent frustrate citizens’ efforts to have easy access to information on the operations of government for them to hold their leaders to account. Nearly two decades ago Zambia began drafting what it called the Freedom of Information Bill which has now evolved into the Access To Information (ATI) Bill. However there has been consistent deferment of the date of introduction of the Bill to Parliament despite assurance that the Bill was approved by Cabinet.   Open access to information legislation are contentious on the African content and some commentators have argued that they have no meaningful impact on access to information by the media and little evidence exists that points to the extent to which they actually assist investigative journalism. An interesting argument for and against freedom
Read more