Opinion: Pres. Lungu & Hichilema Key To Ending Post Election Tension

The country is dangerously teetering between peace and strife and the only people that can do something about it have abdicated their responsibility.

There are two people that can save this situation from sliding into chaos and let everyone get on with their lives. It is time the two leading political figures in President Edgar Lungu and Hakainde Hichilema faced up to their true responsibility to mother Zambia.

For one thing it will not help either of the two to make token statements about peace whilst in the background watching in glee as the blame game keeps oscillating from one camp to the next. Both may feel having a greater claim to the electoral stakes but they should both look at it from a very objective standpoint.

Understandably for President Lungu having tasted state power, it is natural that going into this election he was going into it, expecting to be back to State House after August 11. So he fought so hard and at least for now remains the legitimate winner of the August 11 elections which has sparked discontent among the losing parties.

Unfortunately this election will long be remembered for the violence and divisive nature in which it was conducted with the scars still running deep everywhere. So bad is the situation that the victors cannot savour their victory in peace or the vanquished lick their wounds in peace.

For Hichilema on his fifth attempt maybe this was by far his last shot and he may not be expected to make easy concessions. So what we have are two uncompromising personalities watching everything around them burning but still not willing to budge.

Imagine how much further a gesture of a public show of peace from either party will go in diluting the tension in the country. Is it so hard for the two to embrace each other and call for a joint end to the bloody happenings around some parts of the country? Don’t they both pleasure in hopping from church to church taking ‘selfies’ at every attendance and swear at what Christian lives they lead? There has to be something in their hearts that can heal this nation.

It will not help for example to wish away happenings in Namwala where an alien culture has bared itself of Zambian attacking fellow Zambian in the name of politics. By delaying quench the fire when there is still time only serves to aggravate the situation and posterity may judge this gentlemen harshly. Wonder what happened to the moral authority of the church.

Someone has to stop this nonsense after all our society already has enough avenues for recourse for aggrieved parties just as others have gone to the Constitutional Court.

The post Opinion: Pres. Lungu & Hichilema Key To Ending Post Election Tension appeared first on Zambia Reports.