By Daily Revelation Correspondent
Zambians must remain vigilant and ensure that UPND does not become another PF, says Zambia’s former Ambassador to Australia George Zulu.
And Amb Zulu said Zambians must not elect President Edgar Lungu back into office, warning that the PF will not work in that the President’s focus and the focus in the ruling party will be about who should succeed Lungu.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Amb Zulu said he was confident of a UPND victory, but that his main interest was to ensure that they worked to fulfill their promises and also ensuring that they worked to address the things they were complaining about today, such as bringing back independence to state institutions.
He said it was understandable that Zambians were finding it hard to trust politicians, viewing them to be the same in that the same things the PF complained about the MMD before coming to power in 2011, such as violence, rampant corruption, anti-democratic tendencies and an entrenched culture where state institutions were corrupted to align with the ruling party, are essentially the same things the PF was engaging in today.
“We want him to at least bring back the institutions of governance back to working as state institutions, free from the executive. So that is why we have come here. We have come with the belief that he means what he has promised the people of Zambia. Zambians should remain vigilant. We must be vigilant as Zambians to the promises we are receiving today,” Amb Zulu said.
He said the UPND and the other opposition parties were today victims of having their freedoms curtailed, saying they were complaining about how biased the court system was; about how the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) and police was not independent; the corruption going on and how partisan the public media was operating, saying he was supporting and campaigning for UPND in the hope that they would address these matters conclusively to the satisfaction and service of the Zambian people, and not the ruling party.
Amb Zulu said these are some of the very things he and his close friend Colonel Panji Kaunda joined the PF for before 2011, and that the late president Michael Sata largely worked towards fulfilling the PF manifesto, but that President Lungu, despite calling him a good man, had been swarmed by the ideals of the MMD on account of the people who joined from that party.
“We have followed all the political players and found that HH is promising people salvation and we trust that he will do it. But we have told people that we are not UPND. We are only following the promises UPND is promising,” Amb Zulu said. “If they go and divert we are promising we will come back and condemn HH. Sata in the PF did not divert, it’s the new leadership that has brought back MMD, that’s why we have violence…we will expect that HH stops corruption, violence and tribalism.”
He said Hichilema should not in the name of national unity fail to demand accountability on some of the ills perpetrated by the PF government, such as the fire tender fraud, and abuse of public office.
And Amb Zulu warned against electing President Lungu, saying he will have little appetite to perform as he will be focused on his successor, while the others too in the ruling party will be positioning themselves to take over from him.
“All those who are going back to PF they are positioning themselves to take over. So things will remain the same and maybe even dangerously worse. There won’t be appetite because many will concentrate on who succeeds Edgar,” said Amb Zulu.
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