Merlyn Mwanza
What happened in Kabushi, Kwacha shows you that Hichilema has no soul, says opposition Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba.
And Kabimba is wondering where the technocrats, “mostly” Tonga speaking, are when things are this bad in the country, given that they used to descend heavily on former president Edgar Lungu.
Featuring on 5 FM’s Burning Issues programme, Kabimba accused President Hakainde Hichilema of having influenced the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) to proceed with the elections in Kabushi and Kwacha, saying the little credibility he thought he had left in him for the President has now been completely wiped off.
He said he never thought President Hichilema could go to such lengths to adulterate the electoral system, saying all that pointed towards a man who was desperate and would do anything possible to remain in power.
“If this is not a dictatorship syndrome then I don’t know who is a dictator,” Kabimba said, saying the system was manipulated to reinstate the two independent candidates that had earlier pulled from the race. “It also shows you that this is a man who has no conscious…if you have it will signal you that you can’t go beyond this.”
Kabimba said the “boycott” against the elections in Kabushi and Kwacha, where the winners received only smaller percentages of the vote margins they got during the general elections in 2022, was enough to tell President Hichilema that things were not well on the ground, but that the President was all to comfortable to even send congratulate messages to the winners and boast before the international community that he had restored democracy in the country.
He said he could not describe what President Hichilema would become if he were to govern beyond 2026.
“Where are those technocrats, many Tonga who were descending so heavily on ECL?” Kabimba asked, referring to the technocrats living locally and abroad. “Why have they decided to turn a blind eye to what HH is doing?…Is this about ethnicity and not what is patently true? Is it about it’s our time to eat? Is a wrong only a wrong when it’s not committed by your tribesman? Are these the intellectuals we have created?”
Kabimba said he used to read writings in newspapers from the same technocrats but that they have now gone mute when the country is going through “worse situations” than before.
And Kabimba said Presidential spokesperson Anthony Bwalya was uncultured and not properly brought up over his statements that the politicians who attended the announcement of Harry Kalaba’s party announcement were comedians.
He urged the “boy” to tame his tongue saying he could employ him and pay him a decent living wage, saying Bwalya was a shame to his own parents.
Kabimba charged that President Hichilema’s government got power on a pack of lies, and have continued lying while making deals.
And responding to a caller named Proud, who attacked him and the other opposition figures over their gathering at Kalaba’s party announcement, Kabimba said he could make Proud eternally sad over.
“Who are you?…go hung yourself in Garden. There are a lot of trees there…ubututu, that is the category Proud is in,” Kabimba said, and when another caller suggested that Proud needed to go back to school, Kabimba said it was too late for him to get back to school but should just be selling talk time instead.
Kabimba said he has not heard any thought out view on why the President wanted to abolish the death penalty, saying this was not just about some minister attending a workshop on human rights and then coming back to parrot what was being said at the workshop
He said it was the same copy and paste even on issues like electricity, saying nations like China were moving towards solar energy because they did not have rivers as opposed to Zambia which had many water bodies.
