Why bottom-up style of adopting MPs works best

PF, UPND vie in making the most of grassroots influence

The big parties have left it to the grassroots to choose their candidates Picture Eddie Mwanaleza

VICTOR KALALANDA, Lusaka

In the run-up to the August polls, all political parties have bared their fangs but few are asserting themselves as tactically astute, like the ruling Patriotic Front (PF), in riding perhaps the most effective wave to electoral victory—grassroots popularity.

In PF, this has already been well established in the bottom-up style of adoption at parliamentary level, where selection of candidates now depends on recommendation from the rank and file of the party, rather than basing it, as an example, on ingratiation or mere pecuniary advantage of individual candidates.

In an apparent pursuit of political morality, the party seems to set the precedent that if those closest wield the sharpest knife, then they ought to prove themselves by being closer to the people not to the boss, and that if truly he who pays the piper calls the tune, then the ideal candidate should realise that their net worth will only serve as a means to an end and never as an end in itself.

As a case in point, from its adoption list of parliamentary candidates in Luapula Province, the PF recently dropped seven Members of Parliament (MPs)—including Minister of General Education Dennis Wanchinga—in preference for candidates who may not be widely known at national level but are far better connected locally as per grassroots assessments.

Of this development, which our newspaper refers to as the “PF purge,” the ruling party’s secretary general, Davies Mwila, said “Luapula Province is one of our strongholds, so we picked people who have been on the ground,” adding that “out of 14 MPs, we have only retained seven.”     

On close inspection, the PF has essentially gone back to the basics because the overriding necessity of grassroots support in political movements has long been demonstrated even before Zambia’s independence, most notably in 1962 when the coalition government between UNIP and ANC was formed but went on to suffer perpetual growing pains because of differing local branches.

According to a 2015 study by Eunice Moono, a University of Zambia scholar, the said coalition struggled because “it was seen to be an imposed relationship between the ANC and UNIP leadership without consulting the grassroots,” and that “a UNIP member once questioned the relationship between the two parties, ‘Does it mean that you are only working together there in Lusaka and not here in the village?’”

With the benefit of hindsight, therefore, one way to make party decisions resounding and unanimous is by allowing the ordinary membership to have a voice in such critical decisions as determining which candidate should run for parliamentary seats.

As groups of people who partner to achieve similar political, social and economic goals, political parties can only succeed if party members see their aspirations being represented.

And in what appears to be sheer serendipity, the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) are also exploiting the grassroots avenue as they seek to put their best feet forward in parliamentary elections.

The party’s secretary general himself, Batuke Imenda, spells out the selection method the party is using.

“[We’re starting] from the wards, then we go to the constituency. From the constituency, [we go to] the district. From the district, to the province; that’s when we go to the National Management Committee. Even after having done that, what we normally do is we send an independent team of security people who investigate whether or not what is coming out from the election is true,” he says.    

Practically, in the relatable case that pitted acclaimed lawmaker Jack Mwiimbu against Mutinta Mazoka—the UPND founding president’s daughter—for the Monze Central parliamentary seat, Imenda was emphatic when he ruled out sympathy or financial power as possible deciding factors in who would adopted on the party ticket.

“I don’t know,” he says. “They’re all big names. They all have money . . . . As you have seen, clearly Jack Mwiimbu had a resounding victory in terms of numbers starting from the ward, going to the constituency, going to the district . . . Jack Mwiimbu led all the way, so how do you stop such a person, who has performed like that?”

It is therefore obvious that ahead of the August polls, the two major political parties in the country have decided to cudgel their brains over a dilemma of numbers rather than a dilemma of personalities.

To make a prediction, this sets the country up for an explosive electoral contest for all parliamentary seats in that the electorate will be spoilt for choice and this tends to give added meaning to the voting process because it shows that politicians are not taking anybody for granted.

In the case of the PF, a party that rose to indelible political distinction on a platform of populism, giving power to the grassroots in the decision-making process is a move consistent with the party’s very identity as a pro-poor organisation.

As the life of the broad majority of political movements, the grassroots actually constitute what is referred to in political theory as the working class.

And at a time when economic struggle, deepened by the COVID pandemic, has amplified the voice of ordinary people in Zambia as in any part of the world, to undermine the working class in party organisation is to commit political suicide.

Empowering the local branches in political parties ensures that the greatest power is busted from the bottom and transmitted upwards to guarantee victory, as opposed to a top-down approach which elevates leaders over followers and increases the chances of intra-party rebellion.

As an inherent weakness, however, the grassroots adoption method should be treated as a balancing act because it tends to create a conflict of interest where the candidate who is popular has no money, while their unpopular rival has all the resources it would take to win an election.

In such extraordinary circumstances, political parties should endeavour to bankroll the vulnerable but capable candidates, in that their popularity will still matter in the long run and their message will most likely still resonate with the people in their constituency.

In this country and elsewhere, it has been the moral of many political stories that those who wield financial power as a means to political fortune often end up with mangled reputations, all because there is no honour in buying a man’s way to achievement.

But given the current practice of parliamentary politics by the PF and UPND, one is inclined to conclude that political parties are not leaving anything to chance, and that by mobilising grassroots support early on before campaigns start, they are striking while the iron is hot.

In the final analysis, though such strict levels of party organisation may be more pronounced in the PF and UPND, it is worth noting that the two major political parties in the country are setting a good precedent.