By Staff Reporter
Former Finance minister Ng’andu Magande says the UPND administration must be allowed the time to settle a bit to compare what they promised to the people with reality.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Magande said a lot of things are said during the campaigns, sometimes depending on the audience in front of the speaker, saying “when everybody is clapping and ululating you want to say even a few more things, ‘oh I was in this place and your friends were greeting you’, even when nobody sent you a message.”
He said President Hakainde Hichilema now has a Cabinet, although the establishment was not yet full as most permanent secretaries, ambassadors and heads of most quasi government institutions had not been appointed.
“So l think what one would want to do is let them stay for a bit of time so that they can now compare their written manifesto, their addresses of the crowds and the reality. Once they do that they could have that kind of openness to say we told you this, we had written it in this manner, but like I think the PF admitted, they said that we discovered that in fact even our campaign itself, the promises were not backed by reality,” Magande said. “And therefore because of this to adjust and come up up with what is meaningful in the environment.”
Magande said the manner the election date is scheduled does not give the incoming administration enough time to study and come up with a plan, in view of the National Budget and financial year.
He said it could have also dawned that probably the treasury was dry to implement certain things because probably money is hidden somewhere in New Kasama, and other compounds.
“So I would imagine that anybody who says but you had said free education but you are not giving it, that would be very unfair. Because of Covid the school calendar has been disrupted, everything is not in the normal way we do things. So all this has to be taken into account,” Magande said. “And therefore one would say perhaps by next month when they present the budget some of what they had promised might be accommodated up-to the promise level. But most of the things really they will not be because we know now that in fact the Bank of Zambia hasn’t got the Kwacha, the Kwacha is in New Kasama.”
Magande said it would take the new administration time to know the true timetable of doing things, saying for instance one could not talk about free education now because the school calendar was still running, saying perhaps they could just announce that all the Grade ones will be offered free education from January, 2022, which he said was the beginning of implementation in itself.
“In America, 90 days is spent learning and getting information from the outgoing administration. In Zambia we don’t have that because if there was that kind of arrangement, all these billions that are being found in compounds and people are saying they are from the Central Bank,” Magande said, “there would be handover to say actually we printed K2 billion and it’s somewhere, we didn’t send it to Chipata or Solwezi. It’s in Lusaka, but now those are the unknowns…so it becomes difficult to even say 100 days it will happen.”
Magande said the same goes with arguments over the promise to reduce the price of fertilizer, as the commodity was already in the country, saying what farmers should be saying now is if there could be a consideration by the government to provide some “additional subsidy.”
“Perhaps somebody would say this K8 million we found in Ibex Hill it will go to subsidise the fertilizer…it will only be done now because there is this loose money which was not budgeted for,” Magande said. “Normally we should give time to the government, it is a very big institution, they have to look at so many things sometimes they find that what was being said obviously can’t be implemented at the moment and then they have to vary their implementation.”
He said when Zambia received a debt write off during his time as Finance minister, the government’s intention then was to start with the provision of free education to Grade ones starting 2009, and going out to 2025 when those were now elected to graduate from university, in the hope of providing free education by 2030.
