By Chamuka Shalubala,
…….HAKAINDE Hichilema’s running mate Mutale Nalumango says as long as the polls are free and fair, there will be no drama witnessed once election results are announced.
In an interview, Wednesday, Nalumango said if the elections were fairly held, the PF would go into hiding once the elections results were announced.
“As long as elections are free and fairly held, believe me, they (PF) will go into hiding because Zambians have stated what they want. And it is my strong belief that Zambians have always been Zambians. Like you have heard us say, even my president has stated that these elections must be left to be decided by Zambians. It should not be the Electoral Commission [of Zambia], it should not be the executive, nobody should manipulate the votes.
That (the election results) coming out, either they [will] go into hiding or they should be going into a panic because they are already in panic mode. And that’s why they are doing what they are doing, busy extending resources, abusing the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit,” Nalumnago said.
“DMMU is busy distributing mealie meal in the constituencies where I am, why? What disaster is here? These are abusers through and through. No matter how much they want to manipulate the lives of Zambians, they (Zambians) have seen the evil [and the] failures in so many ways. If you win, [then] so be it but democracy means you win, you step aside. We won’t have any drama as long as elections are free and fair.”
And Nalumango described President Edgar Lungu’s leadership as a disaster.
“Surely they should regret their deeds, actually they should repent of the evil deeds. But the issue is that do they have the capacity to do that? Because even then, there is a lot of abuse. Even the empowerment thing they are talking about is abuse. How are they empowering? Do you empower three weeks before elections? Then you want to get credit for it.
Do we even know the source of income, are they surely spending within the budget? These guys have neither the capacity to understand governance nor to understand democracy. All they are doing today is using money [which] I’m sure [is] meant for other things. They now take it all to empowerment for them to gain political mileage, that is my thinking. So I don’t think they have the capacity, they should by now have known how to behave,” said Nalumango.
“Disaster, in one word, because what has he done right? Convince me that this is what he has done right. Where did we get this man from? We need to know, how did he come on the scene? So his leadership can be described as a disaster. Show me one thing where he has done well, there is nothing. When I’m travelling using roads, you would think you are not in modern Zambia but that of the 1950s.
That is not correct, but they will talk about roads, they will talk about infrastructure. Which infrastructure are they talking about? Let them show us. Now they have resorted to bribing people by giving millions of money to Kaputa for example today, you think you can blind people. There is a saying which literally means ‘something that belongs to a mad man is eaten when he is mad’, this is unacceptable.”