New Heritage party set to join forces with ex-President Lungu to battle alleged threat to democracy

New Heritage Party (NHP) party president, Chishala Kateka, has pledged to work with former president Edgar Lungu in fostering unity among the opposition political parties.

Lungu, in making his comeback to politics, made a clarion call to opposition political parties to unite in order to help the nation to tackle the growing mis-rule of the UPND government and to the rebuilding of democracy in the nation.

Kateka in a statement issued in Lusaka on Monday, said this was to help tackle the growing misrule of the United Party for National Development (UPND) government and rebuild the country.

She said it was clear that those in power today, in their usual, immoral, brazen and divisive manner, were assaulting the democratic space, in one way or the other.

“They are shrinking the democracy in our nation by attacking the opposition through the destabilization of their parties by incarceration of their leaders and or members,” Kateka said.

She said UPND administration was preventing political parties from holding public rallies and hence trampling on the rights to freedom of association and assembly.

Kateka said the press was being slowly but surely gagged and suffocated as it can be seen from several incidents like the recent one in which a journalist lost his job for merely taking a picture of people lining up for mealie meal.

“The IBA tried to control the content of a radio interview of Sishuwa Sishuwa and threatened the journalist and owners of the radio station,” she said.

Kateka said the youth had not been spared as the youth leader of the Socialist Party had been arrested and slammed with very serious charges and even the Clergy had not been spared.

Read More: Armed policemen lay siege to PF secretariat, deny Lungu entry, claim acting on instructions from above (Video)

She said on October 28, 2022, the party issued a timely warning to the nation to the effect that Zambia was and had continued to sleep walk into a Police State.

“On February 9, 2023, we continued to warn the nation through our statement that “dictatorship is slowly and quietly being entrenched in Zambia by UPND and President Hakainde Hichilema,” Kateka said.

She said the party had been vindicated as other voices had now joined in raising alarm who include the twelve Civil Society Organizations that issued a statement on October 26, 2023, headed “Joint CSO Press Statement on the Shrinking Space for Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly in Zambia.

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