Edwin Sakala
Edwin Sakala who calls himself as president of the little known opposition party called ZDDM says the clauses in the recently passed constitution bill of Zambia by Parliament favous foreign sponsored organisations.
Sakala says he is happy that President Edgar Lungu has actually not signed the bill.
Here is Sakala’s statement:
You may again be surprised to see yet another street message reaching you so soon .This time ZDDM is happy to say that it has been vindicated by the President’s decision not to rush into signing the constitution .We want to say THANK YOU TO PRESIDENT LUNGU FOR PROVING THAT HE IS A LISTERNING PRESIDENT.
In our last street massage we informed you that our political party-ZDDM had sent a passionate appeal to President Edgar Lungu pleading with him that he should not rush into sign the constitution bill before listening to the serious concerns of some stakeholders.
On Thursday we physically went to State House to seek audience with him as a follow up to our written appeal but unfortunately we were unable to meet him as he was meeting chiefs who had come for the same mission .The State House staff asked us to go back on Monday when we hope to explain in detail our concerns which look beyond the present but future implications of this constitution.
We are however happy that after listening to our concern and those from other stakeholders including the chiefs he has openly assured the chiefs and the nation at large that he is going to reexamine some clauses before signing the bill into law.
It is most unfortunate that organizations such as the Grand Coalition still insist on having a constitution with many problematic areas adopted as it is while many people in the name of supporting the president opted to shower praise on parliament and expressed satisfaction that the job was at last done with total disregard of the consequences and indeed the concerns from other stakeholders .ZDDM was for a while viewed as a bad egg for standing on the truth that there was a need for the bill to be revisited.
Those of us who truly love and wish the president and this country well did not fear to say the truth in national interest.
This constitution can change this country for better or worse if more thought is given to it such as even to answer questions such as what happens if the running mate dies and in whose interest has parliament deleted clauses which are key to not only development of democracy in Zambia but which could have enriched parliamentary contributions with real issues of concern to the people at grassroots.
The Zambian parliament in its current form has failed to address many serious issues such as ensuring that workers retrenched more than 24 years ago under the Structural Adjustment Program-SAP get paid their terminal benefits .Many of the affected workers have since died while they receive their dues on time. For some of us the Zambian parliament is a total disappointment as it continues to fail to defend our land which continue to be sold to foreigners while the British created Cartel continues to corrupt the whole governance system.
The deleting of some clauses and inclusion of conditions such as the requirement of 1000 supporters is not only shutting the door of power and parliament to the poor and ordinary people but opening wide doors to foreign domination of our country and killing of our independence, jobs and modernization of Zambia because power will indeed remain a monopoly of foreign sponsored organizations and political parties.
The deleted clauses could have restored our independence because Zambians could have guarded jealously every inch of the nation and brought to an end tribal and regional politics where individual tribes want to rule the other 74 tribes and sentiments like those of Barotse and Umodzi Kumawa because each district would have been preoccupied with identifying their potentials as districts to develop and