By Fred M’membe
It’s very clear that President Edgar Lungu and his disciples are trying to impose their will on all of us.
They are trying to keep themselves in power at any cost. They have made it impossible for this country to have free and fair elections this year.
President Lungu is not only trying to impose himself as a presidential candidate when the Constitution clearly doesn’t allow a third term of office, but he has also made it impossible for his competitors to politically mobilise.
But what Mr Lungu and his disciples do not seem to understand is that the social furniture of modern society is so complicated and fragile that it cannot support the Jackboot. We cannot run the processes of modern society by attempting to impose our will upon others by all sorts of crooked, corrupt and repressive schemes. If they have not learned that they have learned nothing. Whatever might be their motivation to seek a third term at any cost, there’s no doubt about its imbecility.
I beg President Lungu and his disciples to turn their backs on this most ugly way of seeking to perpetuate their hold on power and realise that if they are to live in this country and be regarded as decent people deserving the respect of others, they have to act up to different standards than the one they have been following.
These are methods of barbarism. If these are not methods of barbarism, what methods does barbarism employ?
We have been taught that “the man who abides by unjust laws and permits any man to trample and mistreat the country in which he was born, is not an honourable man…In the world there must be a certain degree of honour just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honour, there are always others who bear in themselves the honour of many men. These are the men who rebel with great force against those who steal human honour itself. In those men thousands more are contained, an entire people is contained, human dignity is contained…”
It’s understandable that honest people should be victimised, repressed and humiliated in a Republic where a criminal, cruel, intolerant and tyrannical gang is in power.