The chatter on the social media indicates a prevalent suspicion that the government is lying about the good health of the president, and instead there is a common belief that he is gravely ill. This belief of course is fortified by the alarming appearance of a thin and shrunken looking president on TV newsreels. Of course if he is really gravely ill, then the nation has no choice but to consider the possibility, even the probability of a presidential by-election in the near future.
What reasons might the government have for such a serious offence as lying to the people of Zambia about the president’s health? Presumably such a deception could arise from the PF desire to avoid giving a forewarning to opposition parties that they should get organized for a forthcoming presidential by-election. But also the PF has proved entirely incapable of organizing an orderly succession to their next party leader. Certainly their present inconsistent and peculiar explanations and behaviour on the president’s current trip abroad would seem to suggest a serious state of panic, chaos and paralysis in the PF party and government. This may arise from their lack of any identified successor to Sata.
By contrast, the need for a successor was dealt with very differently by Mwanawasa, who knew very well that he might drop dead at any time. He appointed a vice-president whom he considered fit to take over as acting president and then as elected president, especially that the vice-president brought with him the Eastern Province vote. Mwanawasa therefore had a clear heir apparent who was quickly accepted as the successor after his death.
But in the event of Sata’s demise, everything would be very different. There is no appointed successor. On assuming office he appointed Guy Scott as his vice-president, even though Scott was not intended as Sata’s successor. Scott has no constituency outside of Lusaka Central, is a second generation immigrant, has no charisma and is a poor public speaker. Even worse, when the new President Sata first left the country after assuming office, he declared that Scott was not qualified to act as president because of his parentage, and instead Sata appointed Chikwanda to act. Scott’s position as the designated successor was entirely undermined.
Now what is the point of having a vice-president who cannot act when the substantive president is out of the country? According to the constitution, this is precisely the main function of a vice-president: to act as president when the substantive president goes outside the country, or is incapacitated or dies. Only if the vice-president is also outside the country or incapacitated can another person act as president.
There is another strange thing about Scott being used as a purely non-executive or ceremonial vice-president: there is absolutely nothing in the constitution which says that a vice-president with foreign parents cannot act as president. The foreign parent prohibition applies only to the eligibility of candidates in a presidential election.
There is no requirement in the constitution that a vice-president has to have parents born in Zambia in order to temporarily act as president. Furthermore, the only qualification for being appointed vice-president is to be a member of parliament (Article 45).
So why did Sata invent this fiction that Scott was disqualified to temporarily act as president? We may reasonably assume that he did so precisely because he wanted to operate without a ‘number two’, and therefore deliberately avoided appointing a vice-president who would be seen as his natural successor. Instead of cultivating a successor, Sata has worked assiduously to avoid any person assuming the position of ‘number two’, presumably because an official successor would be regarded as a potential threat to his position. But by the same token, if he dies in office, he automatically leaves a mess.
And so, on the various occasions when Sata has left the country (usually for medical treatment) we have had three different acting presidents: Alexander Chikwanda, Edgar Lungu and Wynter Kabimba. All three of these are unsuitable as successors to the presidency: Chikwanda is too old and shows signs of losing his faculties, Edgar Lungu is a disbarred lawyer who has a drinking problem and Wynter Kabimba is not wanted by most of his cabinet colleagues who consider him to be too devious and untrustworthy. As with Scott, none of them has any charisma or public appeal. Other senior cabinet members, such as Shamenda and Kambwili, are not taken seriously by anybody except themselves.
Since Kabimba is currently the acting president, some people might assume that if Sata were to die during his current visit to Israel, this would leave Kabimba to continue as the acting president in the ninety days before a presidential election, and therefore automatically be the front-runner in the PF selection of their presidential candidate. But this would be an incorrect assumption. According to the constitution, if a president dies in office, then the vice president automatically becomes the acting president unless he is incapacitated. However, since Sata has invented the fiction that Scott cannot act, presumably he would not do so, despite the constitutional requirement that he must do so. In that case the constitution requires (at Article 38) that ‘a member of the cabinet, elected by the cabinet shall perform the functions of the office of president until a person elected as president in accordance with Article 34 assumes office’. Given that the majority of members of cabinet are opposed to Kabimba, the cabinet would not allow him to continue as acting president if Sata dies.
So whom should the cabinet choose as the acting president for the interim? The cabinet’s best strategy would be to appoint a respectable nonentity, such as Ngosa Simbyakula, as the acting president until a presidential by-election is held. In this way the PF would be less constrained in choosing somebody from outside cabinet as the PF presidential candidate.
Here the PF task would be to find a candidate who is not only experienced and popular, but who can distance himself from the terrible record of the PF government, particularly the long list of broken promises that have characterized the sorry story of the PF in office. In addition the PF government has alienated themselves from the Bemba vote by the foolish mistreatment of the Chitimukulu, alienated themselves from the Lozi vote by their equally foolish volte face on the Barotse Agreement and by police terrorism in Barotseland, and alienated themselves from the urban poor by their failure to create jobs and also by the rapidly rising prices of basic commodities.
This means that, within a period or only ninety days of the presidential by-election period, the PF would need to seriously rebrand itself. This would be a very difficult task which would need an untainted and popular leader. Perhaps somebody of the caliber of Given Lubinda could do it.
But the main problem with this strategy is that the presidential candidate is chosen by the PF Central Committee, where Kabimba has spent the past three years building up support within the party at district and provincial levels. However, his authority within the party is probably nothing more than an authority delegated from his Appointing Authority, in which case it may be expected to disappear with the disappearance of the Appointing Authority.
An alternative would for the party to choose Mulenga Sata as the heir to the departed father. But Mulenga Sata would have the problem that a biological heir to the succession would have all the hallmarks of an aristocratic rather than a democratic succession. In addition, he has the drawback of having little discernible ability and no endorsement from his father.
With these considerations in mind, in the event of presidential by-election, the presidency would seem to be an easy picking for the opposition. Therefore we have to allow for the possibility of the precipitate collapse of what was essentially a one-man party.
The post Opinion: Sata’s Successor appeared first on Zambia Reports.
