McDonald Chipenzi, the executive director for the Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP), participated in a press conference on Sunday, May 5, organised by The Alliance for Good Governance in which he congratulated the Patriotic Front (PF) government on its “many successes,” while briefly mentioning “remaining challenges.”
Among the policy areas that Chipenzi gave positive marks, was the rebasing of the kwacha and other economic policies, which Chipenzi says “put more money in peoples’ pockets,” just as the PF campaign slogan promised.
Chipenzi’s press conference, which was featured prominently on the ZNBC evening newscast of pro-government news, represents a 180 degree turnaround from a number of FODEP’s previous statements, which had at times been critical of the government’s repressive approach to the opposition and civil society.
For example, in the past, FODEP has been quite critical of the PF government organising the defection of opposition MPs from the MMD and UPND, which has triggered an unprecedented series of by-elections and diminished the quality of Zambia’s democracy.
The NGO has also faced harassment from the government, which at one point had threatened to shut down its operations. According to the report to the Commonwealth by the Coalition for the Defence of Democratic Rights (CDDR), “On 26 December 2012, the Office of Registrar of Societies, which was also used in the attempt to de-register the MMD, informed FODEP that their registration would be discontinued in 28 days. The accused FODEP of unfounded organisational misconduct and other technicalities. Observers believe that the Registrar of Societies was allegedly acting on instructions from State House to persecute FODEP members such as Executive Director McDonald Chipenze, who in the past had exercised his right to free speech in criticising the practise of defecting MPs from the opposition to the ruling party.”
Today, however, there were no reports of any registration problems following FODEP’s praising of the PF government.
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