Trust, The People Et-cetra..

With my deepest apologies to my dear Lombe Tembo, I will not be voting next year, just like I didn’t vote last year, 2011 and 2008. In fact I look back with regret at 2006 when I voted for the first and most likely last time. Voting, for me, is an overt endorsement of a system of governance that creates and has continued to create inequalities and an economic order serving the median voter. It is an acceptance that the majority are always right and I will not be part of it. 

God! That felt good!

Listening to the constitutional Amendment Bill debate in parliament on Wednesday it became very clear to me why this process has been more protracted than a footballers niggling knee injury. I don’t know how many times we have done this but we have been here before a dozen times. Between a cruel game of brinksmanship and genuine concerns about the content of the document, we have somehow managed to find ourselves in the midst of the mother of all muddles as regards the constitution.

Sifting through the impassioned debates from both sides of the house one is left in no doubt regarding the deep distrust that exists among our politicians. The mistrust between this lot is extremely hard to stomach. In fact I had a hard time believing that not too long ago a pact of sorts existed between the UPND and the PF. Having listened to both sides of the debate with rapt attention, from the rather surprisingly coherent impassioned defence of government’s approach by Information Minister Honourable Chishimba Kambwili, to Kalomo Member of Parliament Honourable Request Muntanga (in his heavy Tonga accent)it seems something will have to give before we even get to the stage where the content will be debated.

The People

It might have seemed a philosophical debate, but a number of speakers particularly from the opposition vehemently vowed to defend the will of the people without ever defining who the people are. And the difficulty this portends was surprisingly ably illustrated by Honourable Kambwili’s submissions where he gave examples of people who are people yet whose views might not be represented. If we are to strictly follow the requirements of our democratic arrangement, parliament are the people’s representatives. However there seemed to be a reluctance on both sides of the house to recognise this fact let alone boldly act on it.

The underlying tones of this whole thing though point to one element; the lack of trust. An atmosphere of mistrust has been hanging over successive constitution making ventures like a fiend. Unsurprisingly, main thrust of the government’s debate seemed to be a message that can be summed up as “please trust me”. Perhaps no one encapsulated this position more than the Minister of Justice who repeatedly and with growing exasperation tried to assure the house that government meant well and were just as eager for a people driven constitution as the rest of us. If this were a marriage it would have been dissolved on account of trust issues.

Well, it is just that when issues of trust are brought into play, it is normal for people to delve into history and look at one’s track record. Even a cursory glance down memory lane reveals glaring and well documented instances when the constitution itself or the constitution making process has been abused and used to fix political opponents (both real and imaginary), or tweaked in order to prolong one party’s stay in power. Unfortunately or maybe even fortunately, these lines of distrust run deep and are quite long. You can trace them all the way from the Kaunda era to today. As such civil society and opposition party concerns should not be merely dismissed as far-fetched manifestations of paranoia but should be attended to if the government wants even a semblance of legitimacy for the document that will be finally churned out.

Fusion of Power

Sadly this process has also laid bare the many shortcomings of our country’s supreme law, non-more evidently exemplified than the fusion of power between the executive and legislature when ideally the two are supposed to comprise the triumvirate of separate but equal arms of government namely the executive, judiciary and legislature. The fact that honourable Ministers have to somehow turn into these two-faced organisms that shuffle between parliamentary representatives and representatives of the executive, is in itself an encumbrance to effective parliamentary constituency representation. In all honesty how does one expect a Minister to somehow within the same breath pipe and support government’s position and at the same time present that of their constituents even when the two positions are diametrically opposed? As such more often than not and as we saw on Wednesday, the ruling party defaults to its now well-trodden path of using their house majority, knowing that its members have a very good idea of which side of their bread is buttered.  The end result is that the whole thing becomes an academic exercise albeit one emblazoned by passionate debate, some well thought out expert opinions but still the inevitable ending of a government win.

Process determines content

Much of the debate on Wednesday centred on process because as some ardently argued “Process determines content”. Whether this assertion is an indisputable fact remains a debate for another day. However I wish to echo the sentiments of Honourable Request Muntanga and to some extent Honourable Gary Nkombo of Mazabuka Central. That while we are haggling about the process, let us not forget that the biggest challenge is to ensure that the content reflects the will of those that made submissions to the Technical Committee drafting the constitution. I hesitate to say “the people “as I too am not convinced as to who exactly are the people. We however hope that those that made submissions are representative of the collective psyche or at least the views of the average Zambian out there. And that these views will be respected as the “people’s wishes, regardless of the costs involved or other considerations.