On Saturday, Nevers Mumba, the president of the MMD, expelled the party’s national chairman Kabinga Pande, Felix Mutati, Situmbeko Musokotwane, Kenneth Chipungu, Kapembwa Simbao and Levy Ngoma, along with 12 other national executive committee members for crossing the floor and gross misconduct. Nevers also expelled national secretary Muhabi Lungu and his deputy Chembe Nyangu for backing other parties’ presidential candidates in the January 20 presidential election.
It was not difficult to guess that Nevers would take this route. This is the easiest option for Nevers, but one with the worst consequences.
It is a lot easier to expel people than to reconcile differences with them. And Nevers, not wanting to do a lot of work, went for the easiest option – expulsions.
Well, no one can deny that nothing wrong was done. There was definitely a violation of party discipline on the part of all those who went to campaign for candidates of other political parties instead of supporting Nevers – the MMD candidate.
Nevers has only expelled those who went to support the UPND presidential candidate and not those who opted to support the candidate of the Patriotic Front. The reasons for this are not clear. Nevers says they are still investigating. Investigating what?
At the helm of the group that was supporting the Patriotic Front candidate was Rupiah Banda. Is Nevers capable of expelling Rupiah from the MMD?
And after all these expulsions, what is Nevers remaining with? The party is gone! What Nevers is holding today is simply a shell where the MMD used to reside. The party is finished. Nevers should just start something else and call it another name.
Anyway, Nevers has lost nothing because the MMD was not his. The same goes for Rupiah. Both of them simply came in to enjoy the benefits of the sweat and toil of those who founded the MMD. It was not their political party. Nevers had his own political party, which he failed to develop and abandoned. Rupiah also was UNIP and was never part of the MMD until 2006 when he was asked to help Levy Mwanawasa’s campaign in Eastern Province.
As for Nevers, our advice is: he is better off as a preacher and not as a politician. His political decisions have been very poor. Expelling all these people at once in the very weak political situation he is in speaks volumes about his political judgment. The best he could have done in the circumstances is to find some accommodation with them while trying to strengthen himself.
What do these expulsions mean for the MMD? Is Nevers really ready for parliamentary by-elections?
We know that Michael Sata had at one time expelled almost all his members of parliament. And it is easy to imitate that. But the circumstances were different. Michael had authority in his party. Nevers doesn’t have that type of authority in MMD. Michael was leading a political party whose popularity was rising. Nevers is in charge of a political party whose political fortunes are declining. Michael was not being challenged by anybody for the leadership of the Patriotic Front. Nevers’ leadership is every day being questioned and challenged. So it doesn’t make sense for Nevers to behave as if he has full control of the MMD when he doesn’t. The people Nevers has expelled constitute the MMD in its current form today. Without them, what remains of the identity of the MMD will be gone.
If Nevers wants to start a new political party, the best he can do is simply to leave the MMD. Trying to bring down the MMD and construct a new party on its ruins will not do for Nevers. Rebuilding a political party is not an easy undertaking. Sometimes it is much better to simply start afresh and build a completely new party with a different name and leadership. This is the end of the MMD as a political party. The MMD will be lucky to win one parliamentary seat in next year’s elections.
We don’t see many of the remaining MMD members of parliament recontesting their seats on Nevers’ ticket. This means that Nevers will have to find new members of parliament. Where will he find them?
Those who supported the Patriotic Front candidate are likely to contest next year’s elections on that party’s ticket and not on the MMD’s. If this happens, who will win a parliamentary seat for the MMD in 2016?
Nevers should simply face reality and accept that his MMD project has failed. It’s time for him to move on and do something else – politics has failed him.