US Senate Democrats Question Zambia’s Electoral Environment Ahead of Vote

Four senior Democrats on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee used a joint statement issued on the eve of Zambia’s general election to question the fairness of the environment in which the country is voting, even as they urged calm and restraint from all sides. Jeanne…

Four senior Democrats on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee used a joint statement issued on the eve of Zambia’s general election to question the fairness of the environment in which the country is voting, even as they urged calm and restraint from all sides.

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the committee’s ranking member, was joined by Cory Booker (D-NJ), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in the statement, released Wednesday in Washington.

The senators framed their intervention against a backdrop of two decades of US-Zambia cooperation on peacekeeping, PEPFAR health funding and democracy programming, a relationship they said had come under strain from the Trump administration’s push to tie health assistance to access to critical minerals under a Global Health Memorandum of Understanding. Despite that friction, they wrote, close cooperation between Washington and Lusaka remains more important than ever.

Their central concern, however, was domestic. The senators accused Zambia’s ruling party of working to undermine the electoral environment in the run-up to Thursday’s vote, drawing a pointed parallel to earlier elections in which opposition figures, President Hakainde Hichilema included, were arrested in what they called efforts to silence dissent. The irony, they argued, is that Hichilema and the United Party for National Development (UPND) now appear willing to lean on some of the same legal levers once used against him to secure a second term.

They cited two specific grievances: laws governing political gatherings, which they said were being enforced selectively to blunt opposition rallies, and changes to Zambia’s Constitution and electoral framework, which they characterised as rushed through without genuine consultation with civil society.

The statement called on every party and candidate to commit to a peaceful poll and on Zambian authorities to apply the law evenly, regardless of political affiliation. It also pressed the US State Department to step up engagement with Zambian civil society groups working on election integrity. For all their criticism, the senators struck a note of cautious optimism, saying they remained “cautiously hopeful” that Thursday’s election would prove free and fair.

Neither the Zambian government nor the UPND had responded publicly to the statement at the time of publication. This publication has sought comment from both and will update the story accordingly.

source: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/dem/release/shaheen-booker-merkley-van-hollen-issue-statement-ahead-of-elections-in-zambia