A vital political reshuffle is about to be staged in Zambia as President Levy Mwanawasa died at the age of 59 in Paris on Tuesday morning after being hospitalized in the Percy Military Hospital for more than a month.
Vice President Rupiah Banda said on state television that Mwanawasa, who was admitted into hospital after being hit by a stroke on June 29 in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt, where he was to attend the African Union summit, died at 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) in the hospital Tuesday.
According to the Zambian Constitution, a presidential election is to be called within 90 days if the president dies in office.
The condition of Zambian President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa had been making steady progress until Sunday night when his condition suddenly changed and required urgent intervention, Vice President Rupiah Banda said Monday. Presidential elections take place every five years in Zambia. The latest was held in 2006, in which Mwanawasa won a second term by a very narrow margin.
The announcement of the president's death came just after Banda said Monday that Mwanawasa's condition had been making steady progress until Sunday night when his condition suddenly changed and required urgent intervention.
The ruling Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD), whose leader was Mwanawasa, has been accused of hiding the truth about Mwanawasa's illness in a "time-buying" tactics to get well-prepared for the emergency by-election.
On July 3, a Johannesburg-based radio station reported Mwanawasa was "dead," generating widespread panic across Zambia.
The story was later dismissed as a misrepresentation but political rumors remained abounding in Lusaka for lack of information.
Source:Xinhua POLITICAL TIME-BOMBER
Mwanawasa's health has become a political time-bomber since he assumed the presidency in October 2006.
He suffered a mild stroke in April 2006, just months before the general elections, arousing speculations about whether he would be fit for such a top position.
However, he made a quick recovery after receiving treatment in London.
Mwanawasa's sudden death will throw the MMD into intensive power struggles since he failed to name a successor when he was alive, according to analysts.
Who should take over from Mwanawasa in the MMD has loomed large while bitter rows over the new leadership continuously hit the headlines in Zambia.
The race for the MMD presidency, after a short warm-up in late 2007, slowed to a crawl as Mwanawasa muffled his favor until death.
Word spread out that the late president had hand-picked Foreign Minister Kabinga Pande, MMD's No.3, as next boss but the succession is now facing disruptions with party dignitaries gearing up to fill in the power vacuum.
The leadership crisis will probably cost the MMD the impending presidential by-election if not solved wisely, observers say.
The Post newspaper has reported that Zambia's biggest opposition party, the Patriotic Front (PF), is pushing for an electoral pact with another opposition United Party for National Development in the event of a presidential by-election.
The report quoted PF sources as saying that "it is actually being dealt with at the top level. We want our cooperation through these meetings to culminate into an alliance or electoral pact because it seems likely that we are headed for a presidential by-election."
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