Presidential race hots up

Zambian President Rupiah Banda has successfully filed his nomination papers as the presidential candidate of the governing Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD).

An attempt by the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) to stop him failed and on Wednesday he became the ninth candidate in the 2011 presidential race.

All week - beginning August 7 - various aspirants, an average of three a day, had been lodging their nomination papers with the chief justice, who is the returning officer in the presidential election.

The previous day, PF leader Michael Sata, who fancies himself as the main contender, filed his papers at a noisy ceremony attended by supporters from around Lusaka.

The supreme court grounds were full of PF supporters in party colours, chanting continuously that they wanted change. Lorries and vans had ferried them to the venue in noisy motorcades.

The police, who maintained a watchful vigil, refused to be provoked, even though they were clearly exasperated at some of the supporters.

The Electoral Commission had said that only the candidates, their 200 supporters, two election agents and three senior party officials would be allowed entry into the supreme court grounds. But PF supporters attempted to force their way in.

The September 20 election is turning out to be the most hotly contested yet.

On August 4, The Electoral Commission had to grant a two-day extension to the nomination period.

The original schedule was for presidential nominations to close on August 10. They were then scheduled to close on Friday. The extension was to accommodate the large number of candidates.

The extension followed a briefing in Lusaka given by the Electoral Commission to all aspiring candidates. It turned out that there could be up to 17 candidates, many of them leaders of essentially one man/woman parties.

The timetable for nominations for parliamentary and local government elections remained the same.

At the briefing, the Electoral Commission chairperson, Judge Ireen Mambilima, called on the presidential candidates to conduct issue-based campaigns.

She said the commission wanted a change in the manner of campaigning this year.

"The commission would like to see a change in the way political parties conduct their campaigns. Let's avoid dwelling on personalities, but concentrate on the issues affecting the people whose vote we are targeting," she said.

She confirmed that the voters' register had been certified and contained 5167154 voters, out of which 2576333 were male and 2590821 female.

She confirmed that the ECZ would go ahead and print the ballot papers in South Africa, something that the opposition PF had said it did not want.

She disclosed that the commission would foot the bill for representatives of all participating political parties to travel to South Africa to witness the printing.

"Participating political parties will be requested to nominate a representative to travel to Durban, South Africa, to witness the whole process (printing) from beginning to the end at the cost of the commission," she said and called on candidates to accept the result once it was declared.

"In every race or competition there can only be one winner and I challenge you to be bold and accept the decision of the people once the winner is declared," she said.

That meeting was almost disrupted after the leader of the United Party for National Development (UPND), Hakainde Hichilema, described as "frivolous" the contributions of Sata, who immediately demanded an apology.

But Banda said there was no need since the word frivolous was neither offensive nor an insult.

Sata was not too satisfied. He insisted on handing over copies of two newspapers he wanted the commission to put out of circulation because they were critical of his candidacy.

The ECZ briefing came the same day as the Central Joint Operations Committee (CJOC) of the Zambia armed and security forces held a rare press briefing at which it warned Sata against dragging the armed and security forces into partisan politics.

The army commander, Lieutenant-General Wisdom Lopa, who spoke on behalf of the CJOC, said the armed forces were loyal only to the commander-in-chief, who was the president and the impression that Sata was giving that they supported him was incorrect.

Sata showed no interest in taking up the matter and busied himself with preparations for his nomination.

Now, with Banda having filed his nomination, all the major political leaders are in the race - Sata, Hichilema and Banda.

Other notables include the leader of the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), Edith Nawakwi, the only woman so far, Charles Milupi of the Alliance for Democracy and Development (ADD) and Dr Kenneth Kaunda's fourth son, Tilyenji, who leads the United National Independence Party (UNIP).

The Women's Lobby Group in fact criticised the MMD for adopting only 19 women out of 150 parliamentary candidates.

It said as the governing party it needed to set a better example by adopting more women.

The race has taken shape and in the weeks ahead it promises to heat up considerably.