President Lungu and the $10million international PR contracts
Last month it was reported in the international news that, in an effort to try and salvage his reputation as having any economic competency, President Lungu had hired French/UK PR firm, Highgate PR.
The value of this contract with a western PR firm is not known, however it is rumoured to be as much as $10million.
The PR firm is run by French businessman, Thomas Eymond-Laritaz, who previously worked for the Ukrainian billionaire Oligarch, Victor Pinchuk and other ‘interesting’ businessmen.
Lungu, whose personal fortune is known to have rocketed to many millions of dollars since being in State House, has become comfortable surrounding himself with advisers use to serving rich oligarchs. Lungu even bought a new private jet to use, despite the country being in a debt crisis.
Whilst Lungu has enjoyed building himself a personal fortune in office, the Zambian men and women he was elected to represent have suffered immense poverty and hardship under his leadership.
The PR contract was reportedly signed on 4 December, and the brief was said to include: “To assist President Lungu with his communications with the international community, debt experts and the media on the subject of the country’s $42bn external debt and its recent defaults on payment and to help him win the 2021 election.”
Interestingly the founder of Highgate was also previously working for the US lobbying and election firm, Mercury Public Affairs.
Mercury are best known for being hired in another multi-million dollar contract for the Zimbabwean government under President Robert Mugabe and President Emmerson Mnangagwa to try and lobby for the removal of sanctions. At the time it was widely reported in the US media.
President Lungu was a devotee of President Mugabe, and was one of the few people to call for his release when he was overthrown by the Army.
One student from the Copperbelt, told us “it is sickening that our president is happy to spend tens of millions of dollars of public money to try and make people think differently about his failed leadership through ‘smoke and mirrors’, rather than spend any money on the people he is in office to serve. He must accept he has failed and deprived many people like me of a good future. The economy was broken a long time before Covid arrived.”
This is not the first time President Lungu has sought to seek help from outside shady influences. In the 2016 election a series of suspicious websites and Facebook groups launched called ‘Zambia Awakens’ which accused opposition leader, Hakainde Hichilema, of being a ‘child eating Satanist’. Videos of the opposition leader were also circulated which portrayed him a werewolf.
Forensic digital analysis showed these sites were being run from Eastern Europe and the US.
Judging by the reputation that President Lungu has earned around the world for running one of the most economically incapable Governments in Zambia’s history, not to mention the wholesale theft and corruption from the public purse by those close to State House, it would seem Lungu is going to need rather more than a $10million dollar PR contract to stop him being voted out of office in August this year.
As this recent video analysis shows from a leading economist talking about the government debt, no PR - however expensive - is going to make them view the situation differently to the reality. The Zambian economy has been destroyed in the space of five short years under Lungu’s PF government.