THE UPND insists that President Edgar Lungu has destroyed everything Zambia prided herself with.
In a statement, UPND secretary general Stephen Katuka said his party was baffled by President Lungu’s sentiments that he would not want to be the one to destroy Zambia and yet he knows that he is the chief architect of the country’s destruction.
“The statement, as reported in The Mast newspaper edition of November 24, 2020, is a further demonstration of the disconnect that exists between what Mr Lungu preaches and what is actually obtaining on the ground,” Katuka said.
He said since January 2015 when President Lungu took power, Zambians have witnessed an unprecedented destruction of nearly every institution of governance while unrestrained corruption has become the new normal.
“As if this were not bad enough, Mr Lungu’s incompetent fiscal management has earned Zambia the embarrassment of being the first African country this year to default on a portion of its external debt which currently stands at a staggering US$12 billion officially. Independent estimates put the debt at $27 billion,” he said.
Katuka wondered whether President Lungu’s failure to pay US$42.5 million interest on the Eurobond does not amount to destroying the country’s image.
“When our president, Mr Hakainde Hichilema, advised the PF regime to slow down on debt contraction, they accused him of being bitter and that they were within the sealing to borrow more. Can Mr Lungu today claim that he is within a safe debt ceiling when he was even compelled to get US$5 million of the Zambian people’s money and pay a French company, Lazard Ferres, to advise on debt restructuring? A whopping US$5 million gone into a project that ended in failure.”
Katuka wondered what President Lungu takes the Zambian people for when he says he does not want to be remembered for having been the source of the country’s destruction.
“What else has Mr Lungu and his divisive Patriotic Front (PF) not destroyed, if we may ask? Has Mr Lungu not destroyed the price of Zambia’s staple food,” Katuka wondered.
“Let us begin from here. In January 2015, when Mr Lungu assumed the presidency, the price of mealie meal was K65 for a 25-kilogramme bag of breakfast while roller meal was fetching K52.
He further wondered how someone could even have the audacity of asking the starving Zambians for a third term in office; an unconstitutional one, for that matter.
He further pointed to the country’s strategic foreign exchange reserves which according to a joint World Bank-International Monetary Fund Debt Sustainability analysis on Zambia, released in August 2019, the country had a foreign exchange reserves import cover to last 4.7 months.
He said because of President Lungu’s appetite for debt contraction and the attendant pressure in paying back, by May 2019, the PF had mopped up the reserves and they could only cover 1.7 months of imports.
Katuka figured that by now, Zambia probably does not even have reserves to last one week and yet reserves are important in helping a country maintain competitively-priced exports, remain liquid in case of crisis and influence the foreign exchange rate of a currency.
“How has our currency fared since Mr Lungu and his PF entered State House in January 2015?
That time, the exchange rate of the Kwacha was K5 to a United States dollar,” he said.
The UPND official noted that after nearly six years, President Lungu has successfully managed to see the Kwacha nosedive to nearly K21 to a dollar.
“Destroying a currency by more than 400 per cent is not one of the attributes of a successful president. This is total failure. Elsewhere, Mr Lungu has succeeded in destroying the rule of law in so many ways including compelling his ministers to remain in office when Parliament was dissolved in 2016,” he said.
He recalled that up to now, President Lungu’s ministers have not paid back the salaries, allowances and advances they received while illegally occupying office.
He said under President Lungu, opposition political parties cannot freely mobilise as they risk being arrested by the Zambia Police, something that was never the case before the PF regime took office.
Katuka recalled that before President Lungu’s ascension to power, journalists were operating freely but the man has so far closed what used to be the country’s most successful private newspaper, The Post, and sent more employees onto the streets by cancelling Prime Television’s broadcasting licence.
Katuka insisted asking that what else has President Lungu not destroyed for him to claim that he does not want to be remembered as the one who destroyed Zambia.
He said with this trail of destruction, President Lungu and the PF regime can only be asked to pack their belongings and prepare to leave the Zambian political stage in 2021 for a competent UPND government led by president Hichilema.