By Potpher C. Mbulo
Date: 04-03-2010
We the Zambians demand more than a pact. Not in quantity but in content. We want listening leaders. Yes, it’s not good to have too many political parties. Too many political parties cause the split vote effect. The split vote effect dilutes possibility of unsitting an incumbent government as there is vote sharing of t...he opposition political parties. It is to counter the split vote effect that we have the pact and may God help us keep it together as it also removes impediment to unity in a highly tribal polarized environment.
The trouble with our democracy and the world over is that despite that democracy is about having the legible citizens electing representatives of their opinions to sit in the National Assembly or Council Chambers where they can put forward those opinions, this concept is defeated by the fact that it all seems to boil down to political parties, and what they think as directed by their leaders.
These party leaders dictate and coach the MPs or Councilors how to debate and vote over most issues, and I believe this is wrong. They should vote as demanded of them by their constituents and not their leaders. Above all, most of these political parties lack good vision.
An example of how political parties paralyze citizen’s will is in the windfall tax. On the campaign agenda, MMD then lead by Mwanawasa promised to improve central treasury earnings by increasing revenue collection through increased mining operations among many other things. Even though they did not necessarily promise wind-fall tax, however when wind-fall tax was implemented, we saw the value of the kwacha against other currencies pick up thereby improving purchasing power with reduced inflation. We the consumers were happy as we directly benefited from these deliberate policies. We said these guys are representing us well from our constituencies. Even international observers commented well of Zambia’s economic prospects in the international media. Alas, RB come and lectured the same MPs to vote out the good innovation in the vanity of hope that government will attract more investment by beating our competitors in foreign investment attraction. This has turned out to be retrogressive. Yet MMD leadership knew very well that Zambians were not for the idea of throwing away the windfall tax. Even under duress emanating from closures of the mines perceived to have been badly affected by the global credit crunch, one would have expected the government to negotiate a relaxation and not a demolition of a good innovation. Moreover, windfall tax is self regulatory. It’s such that if you don’t make a profit as a mine due to low coper price on the international market not due losses of inefficiency, you don’t have to pay tax. Even profit itself has bands of taxation affection. (Windfall tax: 25% at the copper price of $2.50 per pound but below $3.00 per pound, 50% for the next 50 cents increase in price and 75% above $3.50 per pound). We should have just re-adjusted the tax ratio in the bands. So why did the mines cry to remove windfall tax? The experts from World Bank and the donor community were urging us not to remove the wind-fall tax but our leaders never listened. It is my opinion that the mines were not crying for removal of windfall tax. Some hidden agenda must have been at play given the facts above.
As I was saying representative democracy has its short comings not because the system is bad but because the practice is bad. We people are bad. We are owe allegiance not to the nation (constituency) at large but to a grouping (political party) and worse still to an individual who sponsored our cause to be in the assembly to him we are indebted truly. This is bad.
Look at another example: PF has about 41 MPs in parliament. 26 of these are the so-called rebel MPs and they belong to FTJ who had given then to PF during campaign and they report to Machunga. Nothing explains it better than this.
Despite the ills of democracy, I don’t know of any other better system of representative government ever tried. Unless God himself was to sit in the driving seat of national presidency, this is the best we have. All we need to do is to put a political agenda to public scrutiny and relay this feedback to the actual assembly vote. This is our cry that leaders should listen to the views of the constituency they are representing. I believe in a continuous feedback during entire tenure of office not a one reflection of people’s views during campaigns prior to a general election. We all must join the existing political parties and work hard in the hope that we can solicit enough hearing of our opinions to be adopted for party manifesto.
