By Patson Chilemba
State Counsel Wynter Kabimba says Zambians are not stupid and are seeing the regionalised appointments into government positions.
But former Foreign Affairs permanent secretary George Zulu says there could be more diplomatic recall rescissions covering people from all the regions, saying the permanent secretaries in Foreign Affairs should speak out to stop an impression being created against the government.
Commenting on Chishimba Kambwili’s challenge to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to come clean over assertions that some diplomatic rescissions of the over 100 diplomats recalled by President Hakainde Hichilema, were being done with regional considerations, Kabimba said there was no chance that President Hichilema would have won the presidency if Zambians had decided to vote on tribal lines, “but he is now using the presidency to show them his true colours.”
Kabimba said the pattern of the names disclosed to the public so far of the people whose recalls had been rescinded “flies in the face” of the President’s claim to unite the country.
“When you have a situation like that and you are dealing with one or two cases then you can say there are exceptions,” said Kabimba, commenting on the recall of Friday Nyambe as Ambassador from the DRC to be appointed as Intelligence chief, including the reported rescissions of recalls on the Litunga’s son, Brian, deputy Ambassador to Russia Imasiku Mutangelwa, former vice-president Inonge Wina’s son in law and press secretary to Ethiopia Inutu Mupango Mwanza. “When you have a pattern running like that then the conclusion is that this is something which is done by design to achieve a certain objective.”
Kabimba said this was the same criticism the UPND advanced against the then ruling PF, except that the situation was different now because President Hichilema himself promised that he will make sure appointments into government positions were not regionalised.
“So it’s again another lie that has been told to the Zambian people when the UPND says we are here to unite the country, and they are making regional or tribalised appointments. Is that uniting the country? That is disuniting the country,” Kabimba in comments to Daily Revelation said. “He is proving to be just like what we saw in PF, if not worse because this is happening in hardly four months into his presidency.”
Kabimba said Zambians were yet to see what would happen in the next five years.
“But you see the Zambian people are not stupid. They are not fools. They are able to see and they will be able to understand this hypocrisy and this betrayal by the UPND,” Kabimba said. “Because even when you look at the voting pattern in 2021 general elections, the people that actually raised the flag of One Zambia One Nation are not from HH’s region. They were from other regions. HH at presidential level was able to do better than ECL, or he got very close to ECL in constituencies and districts where if people decided to vote on tribal lines, he would have lost this election again.”
Kabimba said Zambians voted in the manner they voted because they were looking for somebody who was promising them redemption and unity, and they believed in the President’s promises.
“After they gave him the power he is using that power now to prove to them that his slogan of One Zambia One Nation is just on paper and he doesn’t mean it. And now that he got the power he is going to show them his true colours,” Kabimba said. “And my message to the Zambian people is you voted in good faith, you voted because you trusted the man. You have not betrayed the man, it is him who has betrayed you. It is him who is walking away from you. It is him proving to you that he doesn’t believe in One Zambia One Nation.”
Kabimba said in 2026 “Zambians should not believe him when he says anything. They shouldn’t believe anything that comes from HH or anything that comes from UPND.”
“This is a political party whose trump-card is nothing but a culture of lies and betrayal of the Zambian people, especially those that voted for them,” said Kabimba.
But Amb Zulu said it was possible there could be more names of the people whose recalls had been rescinded representing all the country’s regions, but that someone may have just picked on names from Western Province to paint the government in negative light.
He said it would be wise for the permanent secretaries in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to come forth and state the correct position on the matter, saying remaining quite was not the most effective way of handling certain matters.
“I have not heard of any rescinding among the Ambassadors recalled, I am just hearing about the diplomats. In fact I am also just reading about it, I don’t know whether it’s just rumours but let the PS come out. I think the PS needs to speak about this because it is only going to be creating an impression because nobody is coming out to rebut this,” said Amb Zulu. “It’s wrong to allow impressions to be created because sometimes they could be damaging politically.”
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