By MILDRED KATONGO –

.Chikwanda

FORMER Finance minister Alexander Chikwanda has said Zambia’s democracy can only be meaningful if everyone, including the opposition and ruling party, accept their obligations and responsibilities.
Mr Chikwanda, who is Patriotic Front (PF) member of the Central Committee (MCC), said those in the opposition must strive for ascendancy through peaceful means and, above all, must accept electoral adversity, especially when elections had been given a clean bill of health by the skeptical international community.
He also said the ruling PF party should accept the obligation to make the political playing field level and prevent all forms of coercion.
Mr Chikwanda said the PF should prevail over law-enforcement agencies not to deny the opposition their legitimate rights of assembly on all kinds of flimsy grounds.
He said in a statement that where violence may be suspected, there should be enough reinforcement of officers even if costly, but a necessary price for democracy.
“The reality is that Zambia is meaningfully united in our little diversity. The idea of our founding fathers and mothers of ‘One Zambia One Nation’ is indelibly embedded in our national psyche,” Mr Chikwanda said.
“We all have and demand privileges and unfettered rights. Our democracy can only have meaning if we all unreservedly accept our obligations and responsibilities.”
Mr Chikwanda said the imperatives of political pluralism required that the party accommodated and tolerated free competition of ideas.
He also said that the PF needed to indulge in serious soul-searching and set distinct moral and ethical benchmarks.
“As a nation, we need a moral crusade to entrench awareness that there is more to life than material trappings. Churches should embrace deeper morality than inadvertently jumping on the corruption bandwagon.
“To pray and give glory to God is a sacrosanct duty and obligation but churches must not wittingly or inadvertently allow fake profession to prayer as a means to escapism,” he said.
On the economy, Mr Chikwanda said it would continue to experience some turbulence as the global economy struggled for more robust growth rates that were a stimulant to developing countries.
He said the slowdown in the Chinese economy and the stronger emerging market economies that engendered faster global economic impetus would constrain higher commodity prices.
Mr Chikwanda said the realistic expectation in economic growth and job creation could only come from the private sector and that the fast track for economic growth was greater investment, both foreign and local, in agriculture and forestry.