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Patriots for Economic Progress (PEP) party leader, Sean Tembo, has described the United Kwacha Alliance (UKA) project as a “comedy of errors”.
Tembo said this was largely because of the presence of former President Edgar Lungu in the alliance, as well as the model that had been adopted to create the alliance.
The PEP leader in a statement issued in Lusaka on Friday, noted that UKA was largely made up of leaders of individual political parties.
“It is a well known fact that Matero Member of Parliament, Miles Sampa, had stolen the Patriotic Front (PF) party, with the help from the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND),” he said.
Tembo stated that it was also common knowledge that the court wrangles in PF were unlikely to be resolved before the 2026 general elections, again with the help of the ruling UPND party.
He said the former President Lungu being in UKA, in his capacity as PF President, was effectively transmitting the wrangles which are in PF into the Alliance.
“Therefore, instead of UKA providing an alternative platform to the hijacked PF, it is instead facing the same dilemma as the hijacked PF,” Tembo stated.
He cautioned that any alliance involving the PF had to be devoid of the former President if it was going to be sellable to the people.
Tembo said the majority of the Zambian people want President Hakainde Hichilema gone after 2026 but at the same time do not want Lungu to go back to State House.
The PEP leader noted that the former president had seven years to run the affairs of this nation and he did what he could.
“Apart from diehard PF supporters, l do not think the former President can convince any reasonable Zambian that there is something that he omitted or forgot to achieve while in office for which he needs to be elected back,” he said.
Tembo added that even though it had become fashionable on the world scene for former leaders to seek re-election and to in fact be elected back into office, the local circumstances were quite different.
He said although President Hichilema unfortunately turned out to be the worst President that Zambia had ever had, one thing that cannot be taken away from him was the fact that he was a resilient and shrewd opposition leader.
“As an opposition leader in Africa, you are like an Impala in the jungle and you need to act like one. Even when drinking water, an Impala will take one sip, then look right, look left, look behind, look up, then take another sip,” Tembo stated.
He added that the other prominent aspect of UKA in its current form, that was worth mentioning was the inherent hypocrisy.
Tembo pointed out that there were people who resigned from Lungu’s government on the basis that it was a corrupt regime and proceeded to form their own party and are today rallying behind him.
“Also we have people who were fired from former President Lungu’s cabinet after referring to fire tenders as wheelbarrow’s, today telling us that they worked very well with their former boss, as they are unveiled as UKA Chief Executive Officer,” he said.
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