By Staff Reporter
Former president Edgar Lungu has asked President Hakainde Hichilema to apologise to Zambians for lies, poor governance and economic challenges people are being subjected to as opposed to more self-praise.
In a statement yesterday, Lungu stated that there was need for genuine and open apologies regarding high cost of mealie meal, electricity shortages, expensive transportation, food and expensive fuel as this was part of good governance.
He stated that the country experienced load-shedding which extended beyond 12 hours and the indiscriminate selling of the nation’s mining assets and contraction of new debt without parliamentary approval.
He stated that these policy misdeeds required public apologies to Zambians too!
“The ongoing assault on our democracy including denying of opposition parties their constitutional right to hold public meetings, the numerous and arbitrary pre-trial arrests of opposition leaders and civic activists on fake charges,” Lungu stated. “The constant violation of human rights and the rule of law, the criminal behaviour of panga yielding ruling party cadres, the deep regional divisions instigated by the executive, and…yes, the LIES. All these need public apologies from the President himself!”
He stated that the above are the issues the government needed to address and not more self praise.
“Not telling people that we are spying on them. Not the false claims of “I was put on death row” when the matter never touched any court trial and judgement after regional and global mediation,” Lungu stated.
He stated that any lawyer would easily tell someone that a person was only put on death row after they had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
” Fyalungula! Next time, we will be told “I even died,” Lungu stated.
He stated that as president, he kept quiet whenever he had nothing significant to say than waste people’s time with meaningless addresses.
” As leaders, let us stop wasting people’s time with meaningless, hour-long addresses. Let us learn to keep quiet and stay away from the press if all we can muster is our pathological pursuit of personal interests, political bitterness and hatred at the expense of the interests of the majority poor and unemployed Zambians that can barely eat a meal a day,” Lungu told President Hichilema.
He stated that if leaders had failed to govern, it was better to step down and resign, so that other competent Zambians could take over, saying this was normal political practices worldwide.
He stated that if people complained about tribalism, the solution was not to enact laws that would result in stiffer punishment for those complaining but to correct the situation.
He stated that in civilized societies, governments did not punish the victims or complainants of visible bad policies but democratic governments listened to their voters and change the bad attitude and policies to address citizens’ complaints.
Lungu stated that there no need to threaten Zambians with mass arrests when they complained against tribalism and regionalism.
“Let government demonstrate policy shift against tribalism and most people will stop complaining. In a true democracy, people must have the freedom to express themselves freely without fearing an arrest and punishment, that only happens in a dictatorship. The last time I checked as former president, Zambia was a democracy, NOT a dictatorship. No threats will silence Zambians,” Lungu stated.
And Lungu stated that he recently read from The Mast Newspaper reporting that President Hichilema had formally apologized to the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops over the recent inappropriate incident in Kabwe where police halted a private meeting between the Bishop of Kabwe, the Rt. Rev Clement Mulenga, and himself.
He stated that if what the unnamed minister quoted by the newspaper was saying was true, he commended the President for being magnanimous when wrong.
Lungu however stated that there was no reason to mark routine government correspondence to citizens and civil society as “secret” unless one was attempting to hide an embarrassment or to placate the Church but avoid doing it publicly.
“This is unprofessional and unpresidential because the wrong was done in public view to the extent that most of our citizens are equally still offended. Or maybe the minister is lying about President Hichilema´s reported secret apology to the Catholic Bishops over the Kabwe incident, otherwise, why classify the information?” Asked Lungu.
