By Staff Reporter
Bowman Lusambo says those who are underrating former president Edgar Lungu are doing so at their own peril because he commands a lot of support on the ground.
Asked that his former boss, former president Edgar Lungu has indicated that he is not yet done with politics, and asked if he would be welcome and how he would rate his chances, Lusambo said president Lungu has not indicated that he is out of politics, saying “the boss is a politician.”
“You can’t just say can you stop whatever things you are doing. No, no, no, no that is not life, that is not the way things are supposed to be,” Lusambo said to Daily Revelation Media, adding that even after late former President Frederick Chiluba left office they used to go to his house to get ideas from him.
Lusambo said the PF was going through rebranding and that Lungu was still his president.
“He’s still PF president because there is no president who has been elected up to now. There is only acting president in the name of Given Lubinda. So president Lungu is still a president for the party but he has said I don’t want to be active in police. So he has given responsibility to the acting president so that we can organize ourselves and probably we go for convention and come up with the president who will be the head of the party,” he said.
Asked if Lungu were to come up and declare interested in 2026, Lusambo said “we will cross the bridge when we reach there. You know we can’t start anticipating things which whether the president is thinking like this.”
“But the bottom of the matter is we should not underrate him. We shouldn’t underate him. He was a president, not opposition president. He was Republican president for seven years, including that transition period we can even say eight years. So don’t underestimate him. Don’t underestimate his popularity on the ground. Don’t! Don’t!” Lusambo said. “So answering to your question, we will cross the bridge when we reach there, but I just wanted to caution those people who have been underrating the former president that you are underrating him at at your own peril. He was a Republican president for seven years so his popularity it is visible. It is very visible.”
Lusambo said Lungu had no equals in PF in terms of popularity.
“There is no one in PF among the people who are vying for presidency who can bypass or beat Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s popularity. That’s why whoever who will be picked as president of our party definitely he has to get blessings from president Lungu,” Lusambo said. “That is the only way you can manage to sail himself through.”
Over the nullification of his Kabushi seat in Ndola by the courts of law, Lusambo boasted that he is the only person to have managed to regain the seat in the history of the country, alleging that he won with a much bigger margin in the last elections but suspected rigging by the UPND.
But asked on his own beliefs that the UPND rigged while in the opposition and how he rated his own chances now that they were in the ruling party, Lusambo said his chances are very high this time around because he was alert to the alleged machinations by the UPND.
He boasted that Kabushi was the only constituency where PF won all the eight council seats, and at parliamentary and presidential levels, saying the votes which managed to put the Ndola mayor into office came from Kabushi.
Lusambo said he would retain the seat a third time running in the upcoming by-election following the nullification of his seat.
He said the happenings against him were done out of petty jealousy, as even in the PF he encountered the same where some opposed his initial adoption as PF candidate in Kabushi and also when he was appointed as minister that he was new in the party.
Lusambo said his ambitions were not restricted to being member of parliament but the highest office itself.
Lusambo said the PF was in the process of rebranding and that 2026 for people like himself was too near and was therefore focussing his higher ambitions for 2031 as his plan was a 10 year programme .
He said the people of Kabushi were crying not because “Bowman’s seat has been nullified” but because of the relationship he has created with them, saying when he moves in his constituency he does not even require security because the people themselves are his security.
