90 Day Promise was Madness – Guy Scott 90 Day Promise was Madness – Guy Scott Published March 17, 2014 By Nse Udoh Vice President Guy Scott has cast further doubt on the seriousness of the Patriotic Front government on the constitution by saying he does not know when the draft constitution will be handed over to the President. Featuring on ZNBC’s Sunday Interview programme, Scott said only a mad man could have promised to bring development within 90 days. The Lusaka Central lawmaker said 90 days was just their style of putting across political discourse. Scott said that there could be no guarantee that a referendum will be held once the draft constitution was handed over to the Head of State. Asked on when the draft constitution would be released Scott responded “I would expect within a matter of weeks. I am not the one releasing it so I can’t give an exact date on that because the opportunity to clarify the whole issue was brought to a grinding halt in parliament.” He added a more confusing version to his response, “ I can’t tell you, I don’t know actually we haven’t agreed the date but we couldn’t because the time we were trying to establish the date business is ground to a halt and anarchy takes over. “Are we supposed to now rush and find the date? We didn’t have the date we said the next step is to settle the date. That is what we were waiting to explain.” Scott said there was no need for opposition political parties and the civil society to take hard line positions on the constitution. “They can express their opinion, nobody is stopping them by doing demonstrations…it is simply putting the back of government up. We will have a referendum if that is what the report recommends and if that is what the report can justify,” he said. Asked on whether he thought that the 2016 elections will be held under a new constitution, Scott said, “I hope so. You can’t guarantee anything, I tried to explain to you. You cannot guarantee that the referendum will pass even if government backs it a 1000 percent other people can block it, it has happened to our next door neighbours.” On the 90 days PF development promise, Scott said the theory was a corruption of the USA 100 days Presidential elect standard. “You (interviewer) should not be a literalist, Barak Obama on two general elections of the USA, both times after 100 days of elections (which) is not 90 days, 90 days is a Zambian innovation when we took over this camp,” Scott said. “We took off 10 days to bring it into two figures instead of having a long one of three figures. But if you go to listen to the television figures and the newspapers and everything else in the United States, 100 days or so after election of a new president to say what has the president achieved in his first 100 days, has he achieved what he promised? “And the leftwing papers or the ones who are sympathetic to Obama will say he has achieved a lot he started this thing on health, he is getting the financial system back into order. The opposition ones will see he has done nothing that is part of the discourse of politics.” On the 90 days mantra, “The people are not familiar with the 100 days semantic way of speaking. They think you promised all of them houses in 90 days literally. We promised we will start a movement within 90 days.” He added: “WHAT SORT OF MAD PERSON would say I promised a million houses in 90 days? It is not written in the literal sense. “Time is there it TOOK ME 20 years to get into the vice presidency, it took Mr Sata 30 years. We are not too worried about four months, a month or two but we must have a more cooperative attitude from the opposition and the NGOs. “At the moment they are trying to score cheap points and it is not helping the process, the process is delicate.” Scott said, “Is their genuine desire to create political pressure which they hope will lead to a perceived constitution crisis? What are they trying to achieve? Are they trying to achieve pressure on government to get out or are they trying to get pressure on government to get the constitution working? That is what I would like to know.” The PF has put itself in an awkward position after failing to fulfill the promise to deliver a people driven constitution. Ruling party MPs shot down a motion moved by Mazabuka Central lawmaker Garry Nkombo to compel government to give a roadmap on the constitution.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 05:47:25 +0000
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