Zambians will pick their next president this Thursday, to choose whether to re-elect President Edgar Lungu who has enacted questionable economic policies and cracked down on opposition leaders and dissenters.
President Lungu has 15 contenders running against him, but polls indicate that the race will be tight as many are expected to vote for Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND) party in his sixth run for the top job.
The incumbent, from the Patriotic Front (PF) party, deployed the army after supporters of opposition parties clashed two weeks before the polls.
Some see this as an attempt to intimidate those who will not vote for him. The Patriotic Front is claiming the opposite PF party spokesman Antonio Mwanza said on Tuesday that the opposition “is using violence” to “undermine the electoral process” in order to ensure voter turnout is low.
Speaking for the last time before the polls on Wednesday, Hichilema told supporters that putting the army on the streets during voting is not normal, calling on Zambians to support each other in non-threatening polls.
Whether voter turnout or intimidation is a way of marring the results, many are saying that it will be difficult for such a tight race to be fair in view of the recent climate, according to Zambian political analyst Neo Simutanyi.
One of the most important issues for voters is the economy, the copper-rich country has embarked on a number of infrastructure projects. However, there was already discord amongst Zambians with the ruling party, PF. The vanity infrastructure projects haven’t brought the jobs promised.
There were originally fears that one of the opposition candidates would withdraw from the election, which would postpone the polls, due to a constitutional decree.
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