Welcome to the sanity side of life

SO TWO presidents sat in the same office, got the same report on their desks, but one slept peacefully over it while the other almost had a heart attack. How could that possibly be?

Is this how far gone we were as a nation?

What is hard to imagine is that the reports of criminal activities involving public funds that HH is reading had been sitting in the same in-tray in the President’s office at State House all along, or should we assume that these are entirely new reports?

Either Bally is being melodramatic – which I think he can’t possibly be good at - in his half-revelations or there is something seriously wrong in our country. Someone surely did sleep on the job.

Morals, especially when it comes to public resources have never been so wanting.

And that there was a whole ministry with dedicated staff and representation at Cabinet level to police the immoral and instill godly principles in the citizenry, plus a dedicated team of eminent men of God in the city who offered themselves as priests to give counsel to the President, ought to be the highest level of hypocrisy.

Yes, some people are now talking of HH raising the bar of the presidency very high; no he hasn’t. That bar has always been high, but it is the men who occupy the seat that decide to play a game of limbo in order to satisfy their own selfish motives, and choose to lose their moral campus.

And how do they lose their moral campus?

Part of the problem is not even theirs, but the people that surround them.

You see, the presidency, especially in our case, is already a very lofty position. Add enough praise singers and bootlickers around it, and you have a throne, and the man sitting thereon becomes a demigod – infallible and without reproach in the eyes of his followers.

Those who dare lift a finger are then seen as blasphemous, ungrateful and envious good-for-nothings. Not in a democracy!

We must not all be swept into the ballymania and get swayed away from reality - the reality that HH is a mere mortal and not Bally from upstairs.
Besides, with our economy in the doldrums and so much mess to clean up – as we have seen so far - he must needs make some very unpopular decisions that may hurt even his loudest praise singers.

The President must avoid becoming the quintessential Bally – the big-buyer-kind who moves about with a bag of money to please his inner circle or party diehards who think and feel they put him where he is, and therefore he must reward them. 

Let’s be very clear, HH was not put in power by a clique of UPND diehards.

I know some people within my small circle who voted red, but who will never don a red t-shirt with the words “Bally Will Fix it” on it, neither have they read the UPND manifesto nor indeed care to.

In fact, they have no real political inclination – they are just patriotic citizens who love their country and desire the best for it.

Some voted for HH simply because they fell out of love with the other guy, while others were inspired by fear; they dreaded the prospect of another five years of being victims of political hooliganism.
To the Zambian people, the PF committed three deadly sins – failure to deal with reported corruption, failure to deal with violent party diehards, and failure to listen to the Zambian people.

Those in the UPND will do well to avoid these pitfalls. As they say, only a fool learns from his own mistakes.

Leaders should work to please the Zambian people and not a clique of diehards within the party circles. Every citizen has a stake.
Let’s keep this sanity.

The Zambian people voted for change, and change not in form only, but in character.

Talking about change, it's good to finally have a president who actually speaks, and speaks to the people who matter the most - the citizens.

Of course I’m talking about the President’s press conference last week.
This one event was in itself a huge departure from what we had become accustomed to the past 10 years as journalists and the nation at large.
When leaders are not answerable or responsive to the citizens, the likelihood is that they do not want to be held accountable for their decisions or actions; they become gods in their own right who can do whatever their hearts will.

But we should not be carried away by eloquence or even clarity of the President, truth is far better than both.

HH, himself, seemed to relish the moment, and probably gave himself a pat on the back afterwards.
The only ones who did not get a pat on the back are the journalists, who were instead sharply criticized for letting HH have it easy.

Come on, journalists don't ask questions to fail their sources, but simply to elicit answers on behalf of the public. It was a press conference not a school quiz.

That is not to say I was entirely happy with all the questions asked during the press conference, or the manner in which they were crafted - we can do better.
But the public should also remember that we are coming from an era where the only chance we got to ask any questions to the President was at the airport under the ding of an aircraft engine, while being shoved off by uncompromising shushushus.

If we bungled the first chance, there will be many more in future; or so we have been assured.
ENDS