Zambian VP to act as president

The Zambian Cabinet on Wednesday agreed that the country's Vice-President Guy Scott will act as president following the death of Michael Sata.

Sata, who flew to London on October 20 for medical check-up died around 20:11 Zambian time at London's King Edward VII Hospital of an unknown illness after months of speculations on his health, according to Secretary to the Cabinet Roland Msiska.

Minister of Justice Edgar Lungu said Cabinet has decided that the vice-president will be acting president for three months until the holding of elections to choose a new leader, according to state broadcaster, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation.

The decision was arrived at after a Cabinet meeting held in the morning following Sata's death.

Sata had left the defense minister to act as president.

Scott, who was chosen as vice-president by Sata immediately after winning the 2011 general elections, never acted as president each time Sata left the country due to a clause in the constitution.

A parentage clause in Zambia's constitution does not allow people whose parents were born outside Zambia to become presidents. The 70-year-old Scott is of Scottish descent and his parents were not born in Zambia.

He becomes the first white man to be Zambia's president since the country gained independence from Britain in 1964.

Scott has been Sata's close ally from the time they formed the Patriotic Front (PF) in 2001 until the party won elections in 2011.

But former Zambian Vice-President Brigadier-General Godfrey Miyanda has argued that Scott does not qualify to act as president because the constitution does not allow him to do so.

He said he had always expressed misgivings on the appointment of Scott as vice-president and the constitutional impasse that may arise should the president die.

Scott will have to organize elections within 90 days but he is not eligible to contest because of the parentage clause. Analysts have predicted a leadership crisis in the governing Patriotic Front (PF) as there was currently a jostling for power to succeed Sata even before he died. Enditem