The Zambian government has confirmed that the inauguration of President-elect Hakainde Hichilema, will be held on Tuesday, 24 August, at the Heroes Stadium in the capital, Lusaka.
The event is scheduled to start at 08:00 a.m. local time, but owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, attendance is strictly by invitation. The stadium will open early to allow guests to enter and gates will close at 07:30 a.m. for a security screening.
Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary, Amos Malupenga, has reassured Zambians not able to attend that they will be able to follow the ceremony via TV, radio and social media.
The inauguration comes just under a week after Hichilema’s landslide election victory was announced on Monday this week. The United Party for National Development (UPND) leader beat incumbent President Edgar Lungu by a margin of nearly a million votes and secured strong support from across Zambia’s 10 provinces.
The UPND enjoyed further success at the parliamentary level, winning in 82 of Zambia’s 156 constituencies – granting the party a majority of four seats in the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, outgoing President Lungu has claimed that some of his colleagues and advisors pressured him to reject the results of last week’s presidential elections and petition to have them overturned.
Lungu said he decided against disputing the results because of the likely violence that would have broken out during the two-week arbitration period.
Speaking to mourners at the funeral of late Patriotic Front North Western Province Chairman, Jackson Kungo, Lungu said he had felt “under pressure” from several colleagues to petition the election results in court.
“I said let’s just give up. Those who want to go and contest for their Parliamentary seats can do so but I think the Presidential petition will not help us. That’s how I abandoned it,” he revealed.
This is contrary to claims that Lungu made last week before the results were announced, when he questioned the fairness of the election during the counting process. On Saturday, the president said that voting in Southern, North Western and Western provinces had been “characterised by violence” and as such the entire election should be considered “a nullity”.
These allegations were disputed by almost every official observation mission, which found that the polls had largely been conducted in a peaceful and proper manner. Furthermore, the president’s claim that Patriotic Front (PF) polling agents had been driven from tallying centres was disproven by the Christian Churches Monitoring Group, which reported that 99% of polling stations had representatives from both the PF and UPND present.
The president’s latest revelation suggests that it was the decision of those around him, including colleagues and advisors, to reject the results when PVT data revealed that HH was on track for a landslide victory.
At the funeral, Mr Lungu further revealed his own reflections on why the Patriotic Front lost so spectacularly, observing that, like UNIP and the MMD before them, “we as PF have gone down 10 years because of violence.”
He said he had advised incoming president Hakainde Hichilema not to make the same mistakes his party made and to make sure Zambia does not slip further into chaos and violence. (PANA/NAN)
