Governance Expert George Chimembe says the recommendation by the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to remove from the law undue campaign privileges for the President and Vice President to ensure equal campaign conditions for all candidates should be supported.
Chimembe, who is also former Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP) Executive Director said the recommendation is progressive, as it will ensure that there is a level playing field for everyone contesting at presidential level.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Chimembe said the campaign privileges given to the President and Vice President disadvantage the other competitors while the political parties that the President and Vice President belong to are advantaged.
“We have also seen some abuse of public resources or even those privileges, they are used to disadvantage the competitors, we saw the former Vice President going around giving lifts to the running mate of a former president, which was against the provisions of the electoral code of conduct”, he said.
He said another abrogation of the provisions of the electoral code of conduct was to extend the privileges accorded to the President and the Vice President to candidates that were contesting in those particular general elections.
Chimembe noted that during his stay at FODEP, the organisation proposed that when campaigns begin, the president should no longer continue being the president and the speaker should instead take over the executive functions so that the president can be looked at like any other presidential candidate adding that some countries like Malaysia have done that.
However, Chimembe has expressed displeasure at the European Union Election Observation Mission’s recommendation to remove the G12 academic qualification requirement from aspirants for elective political positions.
Chimembe said the issues that are debated in parliament border on policy and law making among others therefore the need to have people who are not ill qualified as they would not be able to provide quality contributions and their debate would not be detailed, analytical and informed.
He said there is need for people with some level of education to represent the people, which will enable them to analyse issues brought in parliament with some educational framework adding that people with no requisite qualifications will not be able to understand some of the issues that will be brought into the house thereby disadvantage the representation of the people.
“Our colleagues who are bringing these proposals, what is their standard there, we need to ask our colleagues from Europe what their standard is, do they allow anybody just because he is a citizen, I don’t think so. At the level of parliamentary candidate, I think grade 12 is very fair, otherwise we could have even asked for a diploma as a minimum and a degree would be ideal. At councilor level you tend to have problems getting people that are qualified, we saw that a lot of political parties cried foul but at the end of the day they looked for those people and those people were able to compete so let’s not downgrade.”, he said.
