By AUSTIN KALUBA  –

IF the 1, 000-supporters requirement for political candidates to qualify contesting in an election as required under the amended Constitution had not been introduced, political charlatans would have continued clowning in public.
Let’s face it! This country has a record number of political masqueraders, frauds and impostors.
They include publicity-seekers, frustrated feminists, bitter Government officials with a vengeance to bounce back into power, eccentrics and arrogant technocrats who even at times, despite being politically naïve, overrate themselves by forming breakaway parties.
Call it democracy. I call it a political circus that mocks the integrity that should normally go with politics.
If unbridled, the clowning will continue with all sorts of unsavoury characters who cannot command popularity beyond their neighbourhood, bombarding us with their manifestos.
I feel Zambia only needs three political parties to ensure politics regains its old revered status.
The formation of 30 political parties all in the name of ‘democracy’ has led to confusion reminiscent of the building of the Tower of Babel.
Politics offers a ready platform for publicity seekers, a number of them who exhibit extreme traits of narcissism, whose main characteristic is the grandiose sense of self-importance.
The latest happenings in the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) that saw a breakaway faction has exposed this self-aggrandisement.
Apart from the 1,000-supporters requirement that has phased out political clubs and seasonal political parties, all opposition parties in Zambia fail to practise democracy that they want the ruling party to observe.
Very few opposition political parties go for a convention to challenge dictators who hold power undemocratically.
It is nauseating, therefore, to hear these leaders asking the incumbent to remove a speck in his eyes while they themselves ignore baobab trees in their own eyes.
Then we have NGOs, many who parrot their ‘master’s’ voice, by commenting on local politics by merely championing the views of their financiers elsewhere, who tell them what to do.
In most cases, these NGOs are merely puppets on a chain since the puppet masters remote-control them by telling them what causes to advance.
While I am not against such interventions, I am just concerned at how amateurishly they are being done.
The political process in Zambia needs massive surgery to purge many players who do not know what they are doing.
Only if we do this are we going to give politics the revered name it deserves.