THE appointment of Mwangala Zaloumis and McDonald Chipenzi at the Electoral Commission of Zambia has been met with suspicion and, to an extent, disdain by some members of the public, especially the opposition political parties because the appointees are known to be members of the UPND. Leader of the opposition in Parliament Brian Mundubile even went as far as calling the two appointees “hardcore” UPND cadres. As a newspaper, we are aware that it is a common trend for members of the opposition to try and destabilise government by pushing back against critical decisions of the executive, however, in this particular case we agree with those who feel that the President should have appointed independent individuals without any links to the UPND. As we argue our case, we must stress that UPND spent many years in opposition and they were good at calling out ruling political parties for making decisions which they thought were not made for the good of the nation and they were particularly critical of the Patriotic Front for not ensuring that the three arms of government were independent. Indeed, the UPND promised the voters a different Zambia and in his victory speech, President Hakainde Hichilema vowed to raise the bar so high that his successors would struggle to match him. Looking at his appointments at ECZ, we wonder whether appointing cadres is what the President had in mind when he was talking about raising the bar. In our view, these appointments betray our President’s words because they are the very opposite of raising the bar. We have heard arguments that the new team at ECZ was appointed on merit, that they are qualified or experienced and.......