LUSAKA,
Zambia
Zambian President Edgar Lungu filed his nomination Monday seeking re-election after a court petition to block him failed.
His critics still argued he was not
eligible to contest the election as that would amount to a “third term.”
The country’s Constitutional Court
earlier ruled that he was eligible to run for president again.
Critics had argued that he became head
of state following the death of President Michael Sata in the middle of his
term in office.
President Sata died in 2014 after three
years in power, which necessitated an election in which Lungu was voted in in
2015.
President Lungu has picked a 70-year-old
university professor of microbiology, Nkandu Luo, as his running mate.
The Zambian leader later told
journalists that he was happy over his choice of his running mate, saying he
has chosen her because she was politically strong and professionally
accomplished.
He said he was not worried about people
who may have reservations about his choice of a running mate and called for
peaceful campaigns.
Professor Nkandu Luo |
Prof Luo, a northerner, started as a
junior minister soon after Zambia reverted to multiparty politics in 1991 and
rose through ranks. She, however, left the Movement for Multiparty Democracy to
join the current governing party Patriotic Front in mid-2000.
Incumbent Vice President Inonge Wina,
80, told reporters she had excused herself from being a running mate on account
of her age and had asked the president not to consider her for the job.
Zambia goes to the polls on August 12,
2021.
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