Lusaka, 05 December, 2023 / 5:52 pm (ACI Africa).
Church leaders in Zambia under the Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG) are demanding that the country’s Constitution reform reinstate the requirement for presidential candidates to publicly declare their respective assets.
In a Tuesday, December 5 statement, officials of the independent and nonpartisan election observer comprising four Christian forums that include the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) say the removal of Article 34 of the Constitution in 2016, which required that presidential candidates declare their assets was a step back in realizing integrity and transparency in polls.
“CCMG calls on the Government to publicly commit to revising the Constitution to restore the requirement for presidential candidate asset declarations to be made public and to designate restoration of this important provision as one of the non-contentious issues to be included in the Government's planned first phase of constitutional reform,” they say.
Church leaders also drawn from the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection, the Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ), and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) say it is important to restore the requirement as the 2016 Electoral Process Act requires both presidential and vice-presidential candidates to declare their respective assets.
CCMG's message comes days after Chief Government spokesperson, Cornelius Mweetwa, said President Hakainde Hichilema and Vice President, Mutale Nalumango, are not required by law to declare their assets annually.
