MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has castigated the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) for failing to respect the will of the people and siding with repressive regimes to manipulate election results.
Chamisa was speaking in an interview on the South African
national broadcaster Sadc on Sunday about the invitation by Zambian
President-elect former opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema to attend his
inauguration today.
The guests to Hichilema’s inauguration ceremony are
strictly by invitation due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The opposition leader criticised the regional body, which
he said was siding with a “club” of leaders who were not ready to let go of
power even if voted out of office.
“We want to see the will of the people being respected so
that we do not have the elite (riding) roughshod over the citizens as we have
seen in Zimbabwe, where people vote, but they are punished for voting,” Chamisa
said.
“We need to make sure that Sadc plays its important role
and not side with a club of those who would want to manipulate the will of the
people, but to side with the people. Look at what happened in Malawi. Sadc had
endorsed the Malawian election, but the institutions within Malawi itself invalidated
the election because it was invalid. We want to see the strong institutions
coming in to support the citizens, the will of the people and the verdict that
people would have given in a particular election.”
He called for a democratic transformation process within
Sadc to ensure that it efficiently plays its role of defending the will of the
people and guarding against manipulation of election results.
“What is very clear is that we are beginning to see the
cascading of this positive wave to the African continent,” Chamisa said.
“As you are aware the African continent is a continent of
values, ideals and the liberation promises. So we are built on the foundation
of the liberation promise of our founding fathers, those who liberated the
continent. Their vision was to see
Africa being able to articulate a future. So we are building on that liberation
process, but for that process to be
elevated, there has to be the democratic transformation process, that comes
with structural institutional changes and also entrenching this fundamental
role of the institutions not to tamper with the will of the people. We want to
see the bullet moving away from invalidating
the power of the ballot,” he said.
Sadc congratulated Hichilema for the victory and commended
outgoing President Edgar Lungu for accepting defeat and peacefully handing over
power to the former opposition leader.
The regional bloc has been under criticism by civic society
organisations for stifling democracy for ignoring violations of civil and
political rights by leaders in its member States.
Chamisa, who narrowly lost to President Emmerson Mnangagwa
in the July 30, 2018 elections, but refused to concede defeat, last week said
he would draw inspiration from Hichilema’s win against the Lungu in his bid to
unseat the Zanu PF leader who is facing accusations of escalating human rights
abuses.
But Mnagagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba has vowed that
the Zanu PF leader will not concede defeat if he loses the upcoming elections. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment