Opposition leader elected president in Zambia
Zambia's veteran opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema has
won the southern African country’s presidency with more than 50% of the vote.
Hichilema was declared president–elect early Monday after
getting more than 2.8 million votes to President Edgar Lungu’s 1.8 million
votes, achieving one of the biggest electoral wins in Zambia’s history.
President Edgar Lungu, 64, accepted defeat and said he would
work for a “peaceful transfer of power.”
Hichilema welcomed Lungu's concession but described the
outgoing government as a “brutal regime.” Hichilema had been arrested multiple
times and spent some time in jail on treason charges under Lungu’s government,
but he said he would not seek vengeance or retribution.
Preaching unity in Zambia, a country of 18 million people
with several political and ethnic divisions, Hichilema urged an end to all
political violence in which several people died in the run-up to the elections.
“It is indeed a new day. Change is here," said
Hichilema on Monday. "Let’s put the past behind us. We are not going into
office to arrest those who arrested us … to replace those that have been very
violent against our people only to start a new wave of violence.”
Hichilema, a 59-year old businessman contesting the
presidency for the sixth time, promised democratic reforms, investor-friendly
economic policies, better debt management as well as “zero tolerance” to
corruption and patronage that allegedly characterized Lungu’s administration.
Hichilema garnered more than half of the nearly 5 million
votes cast to win the presidency outright, without having to go to a runoff
election. About 80% of the country's registered voters cast their ballots.
Hichilema will become Zambia’s seventh president since the
reintroduction of multi-party democracy in 1991 by founding president, the late
Kenneth Kaunda, who had ruled the country as a one-party state for more than
two decades.
Hichilema narrowly lost two previous elections to Lungu in
2015 and 2016. His support grew in each of those polls and in 2016 he lost by
just 100,000 votes.
Zambians celebrated overnight, with hundreds of Hichilema's
frenzied supporters turning his home on the outskirts of the capital, Lusaka,
into a party zone.
Hichilema has his work cut out for him, as his supporters
are looking to him to increase employment and cut out corruption. “We will fix
this!” was one of his popular campaign slogans.
Zambia recorded economic progress for more than a decade and
achieved middle-income status in 2011, but now the country is beset by high
inflation, high debt and allegations of corruption.
The COVID-19 pandemic hurt the already stuttering economy
even further. Lockdown measures pushed Zambia into its first recession since 1998
and the economy contracted by 1.2%, according to the World Bank.
An easing of the lockdown measures in the latter part of
2020 and the global rise in copper prices resulted in some recovery, although
inflation reached a high of 22% in February this year, according to the World
Bank.
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