By Staff Reporter
HH will try to attribute his ineptitude and failure to manage the economy to the conflict in Ukraine, says Economic Fighters (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba.
And Kabimba has urged the UPND administration to re-engage the IMF to shelve the agreement for now, as nobody anticipated the problems occasioned by the Ukraine crisis, saying the aim should be to reinstate subsidies to cushion the sufferings brought about by the war.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Kabimba said no one doubted the fact every country has been affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but that he suspected that the same would be used as an excuse to run away from accountability on the several promises made to the Zambian people by President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND.
“No doubt about that, because there was a statement when the government revised the pump price of fuel, the recent revision they attributed it was to the Russia-Ukraine conflict which purely was a scapegoat because we were then just about five days into the conflict. So there is no way that a five day conflict would have adversely affected the pump price of fuel,” Kabimba said. “One would have thought that fuel which is in the country was procured way before this conflict broke out. So I can see people hiding under the guise of the conflict to cover up their ineptitude to govern a country or to further increase the pump price of fuel. This is one of the things the UPND will try to use to run away from accountability on their promises to the people.”
Kabimba accused President Hichilema of failing to explain his ability to manage the economy against what he promised.
“So he will no doubt have a scapegoat now in this Russia-Ukraine conflict and try to attribute his ineptitude, his failure to manage the economy to this conflict,” he said.
He said he expected that 15 days into the war, President Hichilema was going to hold a press briefing to address the nation on how prepared the government was to cushion some of the adverse effects of the conflict on the Zambian people.
But put to him that there was likely to be a further upward adjustment in the pump price on account of the global trends, Kabimba said the problem with the UPND administration was that they were entangled in the IMF deal, as everything they have to do economically was contingent upon consulting the IMF.
He said Zambians had a government which could not make independent decisions for the poor.
“If I were in the government because everyone now is doing a review. The United States has had to offload some of its oil reserves on to the market just to make sure that the price of fuel in the United States doesn’t spike out of control. They have had to send a delegation to Saudi Arabia to try to ask Saudi Arabia to increase its production quota to make sure that the price of oil doesn’t spike out of control,” Kabimba said. “So I think these are contingencies that the the UPND government can use to get back to the IMF and say these are contingencies, we didn’t anticipate them, can we now renegotiate and get back to our agreement when we are out of these doldrums? Whether they have the capacity to do that I am not sure.”
Kabimba said one of the lessons developing countries could learn from big nations was that when it comes to situations like this they were able to reconcile even with their arch enemies, in the same manner the United States has gone to Venezuela to try to increase oil production.
“How do you deal with a station which is beyond the control of either party to a contract? And the time that they were negotiating with IMF I don’t think they had anticipated that a war would break out in Ukraine, that Russia would be sanctioned by Western Europe and the United States,” Kabimba said. “So to what extent the UPND can get back to the IMF and says can we renegotiate this depends on the text or rather the clauses that are contained in that IMF and the Republic of Zambia document, which document I am not privy to and like I have always said I am very skeptical about commenting on things on which I don’t have the full facts because I don’t want to mislead the public.”
He continued.
“And with this conflict which is now in its 14th, 15th day surely we expected the President to hold s media briefing and tell this country what is expected of our government. This is a conflict whose period of time cannot be predicted by anybody. So it’s incumbent on the President, instead of just telling us that they have evacuated the Zambians who were in Ukraine. There is more that he needs to tell the nation as to how much prepared are we as a nation in being cushioned against adverse effects of this conflict economically,” Kabimba said. “This is also about experience…I saw a photo between him VJ (veteran politician and diplomat Dr Vernon Mwaanga) where he’s hosting lunch for some of these elderly statesmen…but then that lunch which he hosted for them came long after they had already taken the votes at the UN, which vote I think they took wrongly when you look at what other countries have done; South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe by taking sides.”
Kabimba said the President needed to consult with people that have experience in international relations because this is a serious situation as they world has never been on the brink of a war on an economic war which will affect the economies of the whole world.
He said Zambia should further work on stocking up reserves as the world has now become more unpredictable.
“If you are following the news is that the American government now is softening its stance on Venezuela which is one of the largest producers of oil in the world. They are abandoning their support for this opposition leader whom they have supported for years, now they want oil from Venezuela, which oil they are not able to get from Russia because of the sanctions which they have applied on Russia,” Kabimba said. “So the Zambian government should look for these openings now for oil. It will be difficult to get oil now through the normal channels. The countries now where you can get oil from will be places like Venezuela and places like Iran. Those who lecture to us not to do certain things are the first one to get to Venezuela.”
He said even the Ukraine crisis did not erupt in one day, as there were warnings over several months that the Russians were going to attack, and that should have raised awareness in leaders to begin planning for contingencies.
“This is about contingency planning. Contingency planning is what makes a country to be a country, taking into account events which had not taken place but which you feel can take place anytime,” said Kabimba.
