By Patson Chilemba
Hakainde Hichilema and his minions are celebrating the jailing of Zambians to the IMF, says FDD leader Edith Nawakwi.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Nawakwi, the former Finance minister, started her response by asking “first where is Sean Tembo?” and proceeded to unload on Inspector General of Police Lemmy Kajoba and President Hakainde Hichilema on the matter.
She wondered why Tembo had been incarcerated and what it was he defamed the President about.
“I think that the Inspector General of Police who is apolitical appointee and a party cadre for UPND must understand that power is not permanent, and that the way things are going, the political and economic outlook, the permanency of Hakainde Hichilema at his residency, because he is not in State House, he is at his residence, the permanence of Hakainde Hichilema at his residency from where he thinks he is running the country cannot be guaranteed in perpetuity,” Nawakwi said. “So when you have leaders who ascend to power by manipulating opinions of citizens, their longevity in office can’t be guaranteed because people get to understand and realise that people cheated their way into power.”
She said no one could assume that power was permanent, saying “Hakainde Hichilema is laying a trap for himself”, and that the same police officers will be the ones to arrest him for what she described as abuse of authority and power “when this power shifts as it is not permanent.”
Nawakwi charged that “Hakainde is so sensitive to even a rat looking for food, a rat, Koswe”, saying he just hears noise and gets rattled and as such he had no time to think about state craft.
“This is one President who is so scared, so insecure. He is so scared in his insecurity that he has no time to think about how we can transit ourselves out of poverty,” Nawakwi said. “No wonder him and his minions are celebrating the imprisonment of Zambians to the jails of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He says that he has got $1.3 billion, we got $7 billion written off in the 1990s. Are we better off? That’s a question to him. Are we better off?”
But put to her on what other alternative the country should have used to get out of this debt trap, which the Edgar Lungu administration she supported brought upon this country, Nawakwi said she considered that question abusive because she was on record as having condemned the acquisition of Eurobonds which were started by the PF under Alexander Chikwanda as Finance minister.
But while it was true that she condemned Chikwanda she still supported the leadership on president Lungu which went on a borrowing spree resulting in the accumulation of the massive debts. But in response, Nawakwi said she supported Lungu against the ascendancy of President Hichilema to power and that she was right.
She said she still believed that Lungu was a better manager than Hichilema, saying he can’t run this country and get it out of poverty and that he was not good enough in state craft.
“That he has no empathy for the poor and basically when everybody says he’s a businessman I said what business has he run as a CV for managing the country? So between Edgar Lungu and Hakainde Hichilema I certainly believe and still do that Edgar Lungu was a better manager for the country. There were of course issues such as party cadres, if you read my record it is very clear,” Nawakwi said, and that no one has taken the “Fubes and the Mutatis” to task for having supported the UPND.
She said Technology minister Felix Mutati quickly jumped the line when he realized that “the green light was about to turn,” saying she, Wynter Kabimba, Sakwiba Sikota and Mutati were one group who believed that Hichilema did not qualify to run the country.
Nawakwi said what she believed about President Hichilema is still very clear today.
“I said Hakainde is vindictive. There is Mumbi Phiri in the cells. I said Hakainde has no heart, he is heartless. There is Kasompe airstrip being razed down. What is the difference between Kasompe and the people in Namwala saying they don’t have grazing land? Those were some of the issues and are still some of the issues,” she said, adding that the amount of money spent razing down the 300 houses could have been used to build another200 kilometers of a new runway. “So it takes a person who is heartless, who has no feeling of fellow human beings to go out, buy diesel and go and run down a house…so tell me wasn’t I right to say Hakainde is heartless and therefore he didn’t qualify in my view to be a leader? Am I wrong to say that Hakainde is heartless and therefore Mumbi Phiri is incarcerated, and therefore Sean Tembo is incarcerated? Every politician he wants to incarcerate.”
She charged that under President Hichilema the country was going back to the one party despotic leadership, saying “and this is an educated young man, a person who should be a flag carrier of human rights. A person whose personal pain should be like that of Jesus…but he doesn’t have that disposition.”
Nawakwi said “at this point in time when the whole world understands that IMF is for creditors and not for the poor”, Zambians must have a government that has a local programme, but that she did not hear anything from “this group” as it was just “IMF and PF” they talked about.
She said the nature of the relief the country had received was like the bank promising that they would help a borrower to pay the interest and not the principle, saying that meant that the debt was still there.
But asked what she would have done to get the country out of the debt, Nawakwi said there was no way she could have given all these incentives to the mining sector, saying she felt the country should not be undressing itself before the IMF as Zambia was rich enough.
“What we don’t have is leaders with enough brains to give us a locally grown programme,” she said.
She said she recently interacted with some young men who told her that they have orders for beans for $1200 per tone to Botswana, arguing that if she were in government she would have taken the money laying in the councils and bought enough seed for beans for exports as the market was very huge on the continent, which she said was better that undressing before the IMF.
She said she would create forestry nurseries and tell each district to plant, eucalyptus and other species and go to the World Bank and UN and ask them to reimburse the country for contributing towards preservation of the environment.
Nawakwi said she would have gotten money from the ADB to have extension officers in all the districts for fish farming as the country can export fish, as well as creating center pivots for Zambians to grow crops three times a year in the form of wheat, soya beans and maize.
She said Zambians were ready to work but “they don’t have a leader with direction.”
But asked if she was ready to meet the President on some of the proposals she she was raising, Nawakwi said President Hichilema was her partner in the UDA alliance and has read the FDD manifesto which is very clear on decentralization.
“Look at how he has messed it up by just thinking decentralization is a matter of giving money to a constituency,” Nawakwi said. “Now when you say to meet the President, are you aware that this President doesn’t listen to anyone but his voice? I am telling you, if he is talking and listening to himself, because he is Mr talking, that’s enough. For him he is governing. Everybody with an idea he considers them completely out of step.”
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