THE MMD'S POLITICAL CARELESSNESS IN ZAMBIA’S 2011 GENERAL ELECTION

By: Qeko
The news that the ruling MMD has lost the Presidential election to an opposition candidate, Michael King Cobra Sata, shows the highest level of political carelessness of the incumbent and ruling party in the history of African politics. Why should ruling MMD allow themselves to be defeated by an opposition party like that? What is it that as a ruling party they were supposed to do in Zambia’s political economy but couldn’t do?

We have bee wondering as to why a ruling party with everything at its disposal can fail to win an election which it organizes and finance. Do political parties conduct elections that they loose? Why should an incumbent President loose an election and be given matching orders to vacate State House by an opposition candidate? Why should the ruling party fail to win an election when they have everything at their disposal to do the right thing and win the political support from the people?

It is a political scandal and carelessness of the highest order for the ruling party with everything at its disposal to be defeated by the opposition party. This is unacceptable and the MMD has just proved how careless they were as a party to fail to win the election when they were the ruling party and the very government of Zambia. For a ruling party to fail to win the election
The main argument here is that ruling parties have all it takes to rule until Jesus Christ come back again. There is no logic whatsoever for the ruling party to loose an election when they are at the center of the ball game. Why should you loose an election that you yourself organizes and finance? Do you organize an election to loose?

This is because in politics the major thing is to give the people what they want and be good to them. It seems the MMD in Zambia did opposite of what they were suppose to do, to give the Zambia people what they were crying for. The party had everything to make sure that their people are given good life. Infact as a ruling party, the MMD had everything at their disposal to create more jobs for the majority unemployed Zambias.

Zambian people have been crying for jobs and an improved life standards through the revamping of their economy something which only the ruling party had the power to do. The major thing and setback was that the MMD leadership concentrated on feeding their stomachs and had little time to think about the ordinary Zambia suffering in the streets of Lusaka and the rural outskirt.

Now a man called Sata who now stays in the country’s state house saw the weakness of the ruling MMD and capitalized on this and score the goal and defeated Banda. What Sata did was just to campaign from a different angle and this was people based campaign where the needs of the people are met. Sata promised the poor and unemployed jobs and an improvement in the living standard in Zambia. This is exactly what they people looked for. The poor and the hungry don’t care the ideology or philosophy you use to win them for as long as their needs are promised to be met.

Now what lessons do we get from the MMD vacating states house and handing power to Sata? The first lesson is that ruling parties in Africa need to do everything under their power to create jobs for the majority of young people who are jobless. This means that nations need to create a good political and economic environment that would enhance economic growth leading to more job creation for the poor. If not job creation then governments in Africa need to come up with programs of action that would empower the jobless young men so that they can begin to venture into some form of economic activities for their survival. In Zambia, these jobless young people are the ones who punished Rupia Banda and his MMD party that they vacated state house and leave it for Sata.

However Sata should not think that he is in that state house forever because the same people is not satisfied, will sack him out and give the presidency to somebody else.