Zambia’s ruling party backs third term for Chiluba

Zambian President Frederick Chiluba on Monday cleared the first hurdle in his bid for a third term of office by winning his party’s approval at a convention boycotted by all his major opponents, AFP reported. Shortly after Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) agreed to amend its constitution to allow him to seek re-election, he formally filed his nomination papers to keep his post as the party’s chief and to make him the MMD candidate in presidential elections due late this year, the report said. The move marked Chiluba’s first public declaration that he would run for a third term, currently barred by Zambia’s constitution, and had split his party and the nation. Chiluba’s opponents - who include Zambian Vice President Christon Tembo and MMD vice president Godfrey Miyanda - have vowed to seek a court order nullifying the party’s vote. The report said the pair claimed that the organisers ignored the party’s rules in assembling the voting delegations. Some 80.5 percent of the 1,082 voting delegates backed the amendment, Robert Fimenza, who heads the party’s internal election process, was quoted as saying. During the debate on the third term, which Chiluba attended, no one offered a dissenting view to the proposed changes and no opponents to Chiluba’s candidacy were nominated. Last week Miyanda said he would stand for election to the party’s top post. But on Saturday he decided to boycott the convention at Mulungushi Rock of Authority in Kabwe, after three ministers were beaten for opposing Chiluba’s re-election bid. Chiluba looked composed as he filed his nomination papers. Without smiling, he said he was happy the amendment had been approved and that he was looking forward to the election. Asked if he was confident of winning, Chiluba reportedly said: “Not until I see my other contenders.” According to the report, Chiluba’s supporters still must try to amend the Zambian constitution, which currently limits the president to two consecutive terms. They would face an uphill battle to win the needed two-thirds majority of parliament, where 74 of the 158 members have signed a petition vowing to vote against the amendment, the report said. Party officials who boycotted the convention said at the weekend that they would go to court to seek an order nullifying the party’s election results. And according to a Monday DPA report, dissident members of parliament had resolved to expel Chiluba from the MMD using their majority in parliament. Speaking from a meeting at Tembo’s home in Lusaka where they were mapping out a strategy, they said the ongoing convention was null and void as the quorum being claimed by the pro-third-term group was empty in the absence of senior members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) members who were key to the convention. Western donors, who provide 53 percent of the national budget, have already spoken against Chiluba running for a third term of office. Last Thursday, according to the DPA report, they wrote him a direct letter urging him to keep to his word that he shall not go for a third term