By Staff Reporter
FDD leader Edith Nawakwi says the “deplorable” manner President Hakainde Hichilema has gone about governing the country makes those who have been to school feel embarrassed about their education.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Nawakwi said people will now start insulting educated people because President Hichilema has failed to justify his education as the economist he always boasted about, to right the ship, saying things were going from
bad to worse in the country.
She said President Hichilema always boasts of always scoring the first, but he has managed to drive the Kwacha to its lowest point where it was now ranked the worst performing currency in the whole world.
She charged that President Hichilema had no solution, especially with monetarists like Dr Denny Kalyalya at the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) who thought that the only thing to do when things are not going well is to increase the reserve ratio, to mop the Kwacha from circulation so that borrowing is made expensive.
“I can tell you, Hakainde’s performance is a marvel in the region and international community. And he thinks that the Americans and the British are looking at him. He’s still dreaming,” Nawakwi said. “They have moved on because they have realized this man can’t deliver on gay rights, this man can’t deliver on democracy. This man can’t deliver on transparency. This man can’t deliver on service. Look at UTH! It’s a shell of itself.”
Nawakwi said President Hichilema made those who have been through a classroom feel embarrassed at the manner he has performed.
She said just looking at the agriculture season alone, it was already gone, warning that there will be hunger next year.
“Instead of thinking about how we restructure the agriculture sector, he’s now putting a law to protect his livestock. He’s the only one with cattle. So he’s telling the nation that those who live near his farms, he does free ranching, so when animals break these fences, they are not even properly fenced, they go into the villages, those villagers will be arrested for stealing cattle, which has been happening around his farms,” Nawakwi said. “Are you telling me when I am president myself since I keep pigs, I should bring a law that theft of pigs is non-bail-able? Is that what we have reduced ourselves as a nation?”
Nawakwi said the Zambian economy was strangled.
“A normal president would have come up with a stimulus package as his colleagues do in America, Japan, Tanzania, South Africa. They would have come up with a stimulus package to stimulate production, because it is only where the country produces that you can stabilise an exchange rate,” Nawakwi said. “But this man is dancing to the whims of the international hawkers like Vedanta, these people who are saying they are bringing money. We heard about some mine which had brought in one point something billion. That money doesn’t even come to Zambia. They bring equipment. They just discount a few dollars.”
Nawakwi argued that the Kwacha could not be expected to perform when there was no forex coming in.
“Coupled with the naivety of Hakainde’s management which he doesn’t have a clue, he goes and squeezes more Kwacha out of the system, meaning the banks cannot lend money to those people who want to be in the Agriculture sector,” Nawakwi said. “And he makes a policy where villagers have to go to ZANACO and some other banks and borrow. What is happening right now in the villages, people are looking for K300 to contribute to an association so that the district agriculture officer can then recommend them to a bank like ZANACO to go and borrow money to plant maize.”
She said President Hichilema has created a vicious cycle of poverty as “the first one to create this vicious cycle”, and that it will not end until he gets out of community house.
“So when you have a person who has no space for creativity other than vindictiveness this is where you get. He is the first to do that. He’s also the first to go to Parliament and literally throw mud at Parliament … No one has adulterated the National Assembly and Parliament the way Hakainde has,” Nawakwi said, saying there was a saying in the Commonwealth that the Speaker has no eyes, no mouth, no ears and no nose. “He wants parliament to be community house. Nowhere in the Commonwealth Parliamentary system can you actually say you have suspended members of parliament because they are rude to the speaker. How did the Speaker get to know?”
Nawakwi charged that President Hichilema has made Speaker Mutti appear like she did not attend school, stressing that this was the first time a Speaker was going to the house to suspend members of parliament without a standing order on the floor debating the same.
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