Governance, Elections, Advocacy, Research Services (GEARS) Initiative Executive Director, McDonald Chipenzi has urged the three Mother Church bodies and Zambia Centre for Inter-party Dialogue (ZCID) to dialogue and reconcile between themselves.
Mr. Chipenzi, who is also a governance and Electoral Expert, says this will ably and convincingly help the two institutions handle the national political dialogue process successfully.
He adds that as long as the duo start pulling each other in a tag-of-war style and continue to take parallel positions on the dialogue process, the process is likely to be impaired.
“There is urgent need for dialogue and reconciliation within the dialogue process between the Church and ZCID”.
“And they have to agree who has the capacities and incompetencies to handle the Inter-party and national dialogue” Chipenzi has insisted.
He says this will also help define in clear terms which of the two institutions’ role would be and to exactly know what role each one must play.
And Chipenzi was quick to recall that the confusion in the dialogue process emanated from the statement issued by State House some weeks back.
“As long as State House and ruling party is siding with one mediator against the other, the dialogue process will be in a perpetual state of confusion”.
“This will lead to realignment of not only ZCID members but other stakeholders too. Those who support the state House and ruling party would want ZCID to lead the process while others with the Church would do the same.” Chipenzi said.
He suggests that before the nation can stall the constitutional and electoral reform process through this stalemate, let the two institutions reflect on their capacities, competencies and the level of public confidence they command before claim leadership to such a complex process.
