By Patson Chilemba and Jane Chanda
PATRIOTS for Economic Progress (PEP) leader Sean Tembo was involved in a near punch-up with Citizens First leader Harry Kalaba during last Saturday’s United Kwacha Alliance (UKA) meeting, which was also attended by former president Edgar Lungu.
And Tembo when contacted by Daily Revelation, attacked some UKA members of being surrogates of the UPND, in apparent reference to Kalaba whom he said with the ruling party’s permission went ahead to appear relevant by saying he ha reported the ruling party to the United Nations and African Union over various abuses.
Prior to the UKA press briefing, which Kalaba, Golden Party leader Jackson Silavwe and National Democratic Congress (NDC) leader Saboi Imboela boycotted by the way, the UKA Council of Presidents held a meeting, which turned confrontational, resulting in the trio’s decision to shun the presser. Other UKA leaders, who attended the meeting include United Liberal Party (ULP) leader and UKA chairperson Sakwiba Sikota, Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) Edith Nawakwi and Heritage Party leader Chisala Kateka.
According to sources who were present during the incident, the hostility between Kalaba and Tembo grew after the latter with the support of Apostle Dan Pule aggressively pushed a motion that Kalaba, Saboi and Silavwe be expelled from the alliance for disrespecting former president Lungu.
“Sean with the support of ba Pule shocked the meeting when he accused the three (Kalaba, Saboi and Silavwe) of disrespecting ECL, and for that, he demanded that they be expelled from the alliance,” the sources revealed. “But what annoyed Kalaba the most, was Sean’s insolence and scorn when he was attacking the three. Can you imagine that Sean was even raising his finger at Kalaba when talking? This irritated Kalaba and he immediately asked Sean not to raise a finger at him.
“But Sean being as combative as he is refused to respect Kalaba’s request, asserting that, he wasn’t raising a finger but merely gesturing to put his point across. And when Kalaba continued with his demand, Sean arrogantly raised a finger at him saying ‘I have pointed at you now, and I what to see your reaction’. At this point, there was confusion and a bitter exchange between the two, before the other leaders calmed the situation”.
The sources said Tembo even went further to accuse Silavwe of collecting money from State House to destabilize UKA.
“You know Sean, he just went ballistic on Jackson. It was a very heated meeting. The worst UKA Council of Presidents meeting we have ever held since we formed UKA,” the sources disclosed. “No wonder, only ECL, Nawakwi, Sakwiba and Kateka were the only ones at the press briefing that followed immediately after. Kalaba, Saboi and Silavwe were furious and decided to stay away from the press briefing.”
Daily Revelation contacted Tembo on the near punch up with Kalaba and that he was also involved in heated arguments with Imboela and Silavwe.
Responding, Tembo said it was difficult to proceed in UKA when there was no unity among themselves as there was a lot of energy that was being spent addressing internal conflicts as opposed to dealing with national issues.
He hoped that the with the passage of time, points of departure would be reduced and that there would be more harmony among themselves to pull in the same direction, as opposed to a situation where others were pushing while others were pulling, thereby creating conflicts.
He maintained that former president Edgar Lungu must be the presidential candidate for UKA, saying any reasonable Zambian who was serious about removing the UPND should do the same.
He said Lungu was the one who had the most momentum at the moment to assure the opposition victory.
Tembo said in supporting Lungu, he was not implying that the others were incapable of removing President Hakainde Hichilema but that Lungu was the one with the highest probability to do so.
He said only those with ulterior motives disagreed with his point of view, and were trying to undermine the prospects of the opposition winning the elections in 2026.
Tembo said wherever anyone would go in the world, the former head of state always carried weight, citing South Africa where the newly born party formed by former president Jacob Zuma supplanted Julius Malema’s EFF to become the third biggest party in the country within just weeks of campaigning.
He accused some people in UKA of trying to play tricks to postpone the decision on the presidential candidature, arguing the same was disadvantaging the alliance.
He said the issues they were supposed to be debating upon was the allocation of parliamentary, and seats in civic institutions.
“We have some individuals in the alliance who believe that they have got more political clout than president Lungu and that they should be the candidate and that is causing s lot of conflict,” he said.
Asked if his point of argument was the same which animated him so much to have picked up on Dr Pule’s appeal to expel Kalaba, Imboela and Silavwe, so much so that he accused them of disrespecting Lungu and was almost coming to blows with Kalaba and accusing Silavwe of being sponsored by State House, Tembo said it was difficult when people were having a disagreement in a meeting to pinpoint how the disagreement came about, “who said what and how the disagreement escalated.”
“The bottom line is that we had a heated argument. As to how it arose, I can’t really split the hairs and say it was this or that. But it bordered on the issue of respect or lack of respect in the proceedings, in the deliberations where done unsavoury language was used by some of the members in debating issues on the table,” Tembo said. “So it was an issue whereby we were disagreeing on the use by some of the members of the alliance in the language in addressing some of us, and we felt that their language was not appropriate. And they insisted that they will stick to their language and of course that brought about the conflict.”
On the eligibility issue facing Lungu which some in the alliance have raised as being stacked against the former head of state, Tembo said it was clear that the UPND did not want Lungu to contest the elections, accusing the UPND of having sponsored some members of the alliance to frustrate Lungu’s candidature in 2026.
“A good portion of those members are actually surrogates of the UPND. I have got no doubt in my mind about that, and the reason is simple really, it’s because the UPND know that the most viable candidate which can unseat President Hakainde Hichilema is former president Lungu,” Tembo said. “It’s a fact. They know it for a fact. Like I said earlier I am not saying any of us are incapable, we are just less capable. That’s all I am saying. And that’s a fact. And in doing these politics it’s important to face facts as they are instead of burying one’s head in the sand.”
He argued that he personally believed to be popular around the country but he could not compare himself with Lungu.
He said there would be no opposition to talk about post 2026 if President Hichilema were re-elected back to office.
“Everybody, myself and most likely even yourself, Patson, will be locked up. We’ll be prisoners. We’ll be imprisoned. That is what will happen to this country post 2026 should the Zambian people make the mistake of re-electing President Hakainde Hichilema in office,” Tembo said.
He said that was the more reason why he thought the conflicts in UKA were so petty and a waste of time.
“And when you really analyse it you realise that the people causing confusion in UKA and the people resisting the candidature of president Lungu in UKA are those who are not facing any criminal charges,” said Tembo. “And we say the same things about the UPND. You should ask yourself why is it that some of us are arrested almost on a daily basis whereas others have never been arrested? It points to one conclusion, they are surrogates of the UPND.
“And even if they appear to be challenging UPND they only do it with the approval of UPND itself to say mailo mukatichiteko attack pang’ono so that muoneke monga ba opposition (attack us a little bit tomorrow to appear like an opposition). Then they make headlines eh what what what, we’ve reported President Hichilema to the US or to … so that they look like opposition. But in reality they are not because they have never been arrested, they don’t have any cases at police or court. Some of us have got multiple cases.”
He justified the same to mean that the ruling party did not like some opposition leaders.
“It is therefore, wrong for any UKA member to be creating or encouraging multiple political alliances and later on belong to all of them,” Sikota stated.
He stated that during a Council of Presidents (CoP) meeting attended by all UKA CoP presidents, it was resolved that UKA member presidents, senior officials and office bearers were not permitted to join or be members of other political alliances.
Sikota stated that the objective of UKA was to have a united front in rescuing this country from maladministration and extreme poverty created by the UPND Government.
He states that UKA warmly welcomed political parties, the Church, civil society organizations, trade unions, non governmental organizations, student bodies, bus drivers, marketeers and ordinary Zambians to work with them for the future of the Country.
Sikota also stated that the core purpose of UKA was to reduce the number of political players so that they had a common strategy and the electorate were not overwhelmed by multiplicity of candidates.
He stated that in order to strengthen the UKA membership, the Council resolved that recruitment of members should be done outside UKA participating political parties in order to enlarge the general membership of the alliance.
UKA announced that a senior colleague and member of the UKA CoP, Apostle Dan Pule of CDP brought it to the attention of the council that he was one of the founder members and office bearer in Tonse Alliance, consequently, he could not continue being a member of the alliance.
‘UKA reaffirms that we are totally resolved to closely work with PF, ULP, CF, GPZ, NHP, NDC, FDD, NRP and RDC to answer the call of the Zambian people to deliver them from the UPND misrule,” stated Sikota.
