IBA a danger to Zambia’s democracy


By: Anthony Bwalya – UPND Member

I woke up to a message, impossible to fathom, yet not exactly unusual in a country like Zambia, where every action and decision made in the public arena is anchored on corruption, deception and manipulation; and all for the sole purpose of assisting the Patriotic Front (PF) cement their unholy grip on power and control.

Revelations that a serving IBA Board Member, Chalimba Phiri, is actively in bed and screwing around with the PF by actively providing them with “consultancy services” principally aimed at undermining our democracy by silencing the media, should be a wake up call for any sane Zambian, that our public institutions of governance are under a hostile, state capture takeover.

These institutions, such as the IBA, do not exist to serve the public and national interest as purported under the law that creates such creatures. The IBA is a working arm of the PF regime and will act and only act for and on behalf of the PF regime, and only in the interest of the PF regime.

How does an individual, who is either in the process of soliciting for work from the PF, or actively receiving payment from the PF, act impartially and professionally when his impartiality and professionalism can harm the people who are paying him?

Chalimba Phiri is NOT the only reprobate on the IBA board. They all are. If any one of them disagrees with my tagging them REPROBATES actively working to strangle our democracy by shrinking the private media space, and therefore working for the PF regime, let them come out in the open and justify their immoral conduct exercised in the closure of Prime Television.

This is the problem we currently have in Zambia: all frontline institutions of governance, including the courts, Electoral Commission of Zambia, the police, the IBA and several others are peppered with PF operatives and cadres who ensure that the agenda of the PF regime goes unchallenged.

The country witnessed an unplanned, unauthorized protest on the Copperbelt calling for Mopani Copper Mines to leave and the police allowed it. The reason is simple: the plan of the PF led cartel is to force the closure of not only Mopani but other viable mining corporations so that the cartel can take over. The takeover of the mines will NOT be for the benefit of Zambians. Any takeover will be for the benefit of the state capture cartel with PF at the heart of it.

Zambian workers will be worse off if and when we allow state capture cartels takeover our mines because our people will have no recourse to justice.

The reason I have mentioned protests on the Copperbelt against Mopani is to demonstrate that any protests against the closure of Prime TV will never be tolerated because it will fly in the face of the agendas of the PF regime.

This is why K13 million from City Market can be plundered without consequences because that money ended up at the PF Secretariat, and the market is under the leadership of known PF operatives.

And this is the sort of country we have been creating since 2011. And this is the sort of country others want to continue with post 2021.

This is not a Zambian Republic.

This is a PF mafia state.

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