By Staff Reporter
Ruling UPND spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa has claimed that the people who protested at Intercity bus terminus this morning are not genuine UPND cadres, describing them as metamorphosing from PF to suit the moment and continue abusing the public.
But in the same breath, the Southern Province minister said people have the right to protest.
Speaking with Daily Revelation over the protests at InterCity today by suspected UPND cadres and call boys, whom the members of the public have accused of causing havoc and extorting them, Mweetwa argued that those abusing the public in the bus stations were not UPND cadres, as any genuine member of the party would not go against the presidential directives against caderism.
“All UPND supporters and cadres, those who stood with the party at the most crucial times when it mattered the most, non of them today can go and hold a bus stop hostage. So those who are metamorphosing from one political party to another just to suit the moment at continue to abuse the public can surely not be said to be UPND cadres. They are not genuine UPND cadres,” Mweetwa said.
Mweetwa said this could be the actions of people who have recently joined the party.
“We don’t have unruly cadres, we do not have unruly cadres. Those same people who were beating people at Intercity they have just stopped beating people and now want to continue siphoning money from people or something like that. We do not have cadres of people who are unruly. And anybody who misbehaves and waves a party symbol, or anybody who misbehaves in the name of the party does not make such a one a genuine member of the party,” Mweetwa said. “We are still struggling as a country to come out of a hangover of lawlessness. Zambia is still drunk with a hangover of lawlessness…where caderism meant a passport to breaking the law with impunity. You saw what people were doing. They would have an illegal car wash in town. They will do anything illegal and all they needed was to tie PF chitenge there, and out on T-shirt’s written ECL 2021 and beyond.”
However, Mweetwa said he would not go the same route of encouraging police to break the protesters legs, in the same manner Tutwa Ngulube famously said.
“We are not a lawless government, people who break the law, the law must deal with them in accordance with prescribed procedures and that the law must be applied judiciously but reasonably. There is no room to begin to arm the police with an attitude of brutality against its own citizens, no!” Mweetwa said Mweetwa. “If people have protested they must be heard. They have the right to be heard, what are they protesting about? And and if the protest is not backed by the law, because the law allows protests. The law allows protests. So where protest is held without, outside the province of the law, again the law has prescribed how such a situation is supposed to be mitigated. There is no room to begin to incite police to begin to break anybody’s bones, nothing.”
