TRANSPARENCY International Zambia is right to warn that much campaign language is unrealistic, financially unsustainable and detached from party manifestos. An election should be a contest of ideas, priorities and plans. Instead, Zambia is once again being treated to an auction of hope in which candidates compete to offer the largest benefits at the lowest cost, without explaining who will pay or which institution will implement them.

Rather than entertain, campaign promises are supposed to influence voting decisions, shape expectations and become a moral contract with the electorate. A politician who knowingly makes an impossible promise is not merely being ambitious; he is misleading the public. Dressing it as empowerment, free services or national renewal does not change that.

Zambians should remember the lesson of 2021. The UPND entered that election with an impressive catalogue of promises: cheaper fuel, affordable mealie meal, jobs, free education, improved agriculture, a stronger currency, an end to waste and a government that would move with unusual speed. Some commitments have been acted upon and some reforms have produced progress. But the party also overpromised. It created the impression that political change would quickly translate into household relief.

When implementation proved harder, President Hakainde Hichilema explained that he did not know how bad things were inside government. He said he did not know the depth of the problems he would inherit. We remember that he later promised to take a report to Parliament so the nation could see the extent of the rot inherited from the Patriotic Front. That comprehensive reckoning never became the public document many expected.

The explanation may have contained truth. But that is precisely why responsible opposition parties must conduct serious policy work before making commitments. A candidate seeking the presidency cannot promise on the assumption that the Treasury is healthy and every institution works. He must campaign for the government that exists, not for an imaginary state with endless money.

Public anger eventually reduced the UPND’s catalogue of pledges to a nickname. President Hichilema became Bashi Promise, the father of promises. The label may be politically crude, but it reflected a democratic grievance: citizens felt that their expectations had been deliberately inflated. One would expect the opposition to have learnt from this. Instead, another election has arrived and a fresh list of spectacular pledges is being cooked. If Mr Hichilema is Bashi Promise, then NRPUP leader Brian Mundubile is rapidly presenting himself as Bashi Promise-Promax.

Mr Brian Mundubile appears to believe that every audience must be offered a customised miracle. Here are some of the promises that the opposition leader has made:

1. He has promised there will be no thieves in his government compared to the previous PF.
2. He says if elected he will extend student meal allowances to other universities to ensure that they suit the living realities among Zambians, meaning if the cost of living goes up, he will increase allowances for students.
3. If elected, he says his government will cancel all student loans.
4. If elected, two years in office, his government will produce millionaires in Chisamba from gold mining.
5. He says if elected, his government will create a ministry of digital economy, which will see to it that social media content creation is monetised. (He promises this yet he has not even engaged Meta to have his official Facebook page verified).
6. He has promised that if elected pupils in Zambia will be finding free books and uniforms at school.
7. He has promised to change the Constitution if elected and repeal all bad laws enacted by UPND.
8. He has promised that they will repeal the cyber law, even though this law was actually initiated by his Patriotic Front government at the time when he was in government.
9. He has promised Jerabos on the Copperbelt that he will give them back Senseli mine and Kikonge, but he has not told the youths that those mines he is referring to are owned by private license holders.
10. He has also promised that his government would empower marketeers with at least an excavator and a small vehicle.

Huh!!!
To be continued…