By Staff Reporters
UPND is nurturing the same violence and abuse of public resources that was planted, says Lupososhi member of parliament Emmanuel Mpankata.
And the Socialist Party (SP) has vowed to petition the Lukutu Ward by-election results in Northern Province after losing to the UPND and beating the PF in what has been the former ruling party’s strongholds.
But UPND spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa dismissed the opposition claims, saying in these social media times there was not even a single video anywhere showing any violence during the campaigns.
Speaking with Daily Revelation following the recent by-elections in Mongu, Monze and Luwingu which were all scooped by the ruling UPND, Mpankata said he was puzzled that all of a sudden the UPND has money to flash around to the electorates, saying “this is a stolen vote like the leader of the Socialist Party has said.”
He said there were more government vehicles, without number plates in Luwingu, than the actual voters, further accusing the ruling UPND of violence, saying he too would have been killed like Justine Kungo, but was protected by the voters as “stones flew over my head at one polling station.”
He said that the UPND claimed that they would end abuse of state resources and violence and that it was on the same premise they were elected into office.
Put to him that the things he was blaming the UPND for could merely be a continuation of the same things the PF were doing while in office, and asked if they could have used their time in power to put things in order, Mpankata said: “If the seed if violence was planted, they promised to uproot it. Why continue with the bad seed? If it was a bad seed PF planted, why are they using it? They are nurturing that seed and using it effectively. More than we did. They have failed to uproot it because that is their nature. Remember the Mapatizya formula.”
But reminded that the PF has not just lost to the UPND, but they also lost to SP in what they call their stronghold, which is now becoming a trend, of coming third to the UPND and SP, especially in the nothern regions of the country, Mpankata accused the SP of also using money, claiming “they brought trucks to ferry people”, and that they had a “gang of youths in the area.”
He said there was extreme poverty in rural areas which party leaders were preying on instead of addressing the problem.
Asked why they should be allowed back into office when they had already shown theirs indiscretions when they were given the power to rule, Mpankata claimed they had been in power before and that “the next time we would do things differently.”
SP leader Fred M’membe has indicated that they would petition the elections won by the UPND.
But Mweetwa said the ruling party was not aware of any of the claims the opposition were raising, saying as far as they were concerned all the three by-elections were free.
“And true to that you haven’t seen any single circulation of someone claiming to have been beaten. There is nothing like that. Ideally where there is violence you would have already seen that social media would have been awash with the same, because the people of this country detest violence. So UPND is different and we are living up to our word,” Mweetwa said. “When we said that we are a peaceful party, we were going to govern the country according to the rule of law, this is exactly what we were saying. The doomsayers were saying no, look UPND is a violent political party. We said that for there to be peace in the country devoid of political violence you need leadership to be able to understand their mandate and enforce their law to the later.”
He said this was not the time to start to manufacture issues that did not exist, saying if the Socialist Party wanted to petition that was their right, but that they still had a long long way to go.
Mweetwa said he wished the SP could replicate the results they were posting “in that region of the country across the country then they could be considered to be a factor.”
He said they participated in the general elections but could not even win a single councilor, and that from these by-elections their results from the other provinces were very poor.
Mweetwa said if a national election were to be held today, SP would be nowhere near the vicinity because they did not have a national character, saying they participated in by-elections in Western and Southern provinces but had nothing to show for that.
“When you begin to score an average across the country, even if you don’t win then just know that you are in the mix. That’s how even as UPND we were gaining confidence that we are now going to win. There came a time when we won by-elections in Lupososhi and Kapoche, right where the ruling party thought were their strongholds,” he said.
He said the results were an endorsement of the programmes being put in place such as the peace, restoration of the rule of law, free education, disbursement of CDF in the first quarter, and prudence in terms of how public resources are being utilised.
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