By Scoop Reporter
THE 2021 elections are a two-horse race between the Patriotic Front (PF) United Part for National Development (UPND) and only three political parties must be on the ballot papers as the rest are just timewasters, good governance activist Crawford Mukando has said.
Speaking to The Scoop this afternoon, Mr. Mukando says Zambians are tired of briefcase political parties which are in the habit of only reappearing during election time with the sole purpose of getting funding from donors for personal use.
“Each day we are drawing closer to the polling date, those political party leaders, who hardly exist, are beginning to mushroom from the ashes of political oblivion. Actually, you hardly hear some political parties until we get closer to election time.
“For those of us who have a civic conscious and have closely been following these leaders who just want to flood the ballot papers and draw a US $200,000 donor fee for aspiring presidential candidates on the 11th -hour, have concluded that these are just last-hour tactics to start talking and be heard,” Mr. Mukando said.
He says has it not been for the current Constitution which provides that a presidential candidate must mobilise at least 1, 000 supporters to successfully file in the nomination papers with 100 validly registered voters from the respective 10 provinces, the situation would have been worse.
He says only the PF and UPND are the real contenders to the presidency with the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the Democratic Party (DP), and Socialist Party (SP) the other three serious political parties.
He says the rest are a bunch of timewasters who should be nowhere near the ballot papers.
“Going by the arrogance of numbers, the 2021 presidential election is a two-horse race between PF and UPND. The rest are just time wasters and jokers who should not even waste our time as electorates to cast a vote for them.
“Among all other opposition political parties in Zambia, the only three other exceptions that could quite possibly maybe make sense are MMD, NDC, and Socialist Party under Fred M’membe. The rest are just timewasters,” he said.
