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Socialist Party (SP) leader, Fred M’membe, has insisted that President Hakainde Hichilema and the United Party for National Development (UPND) were responsible for the drama currently playing out in the former ruling Patriotic Front (PF) party.
M’membe said the UPND and Hichilema may choose to remain mute on the matter and hide but that their fingerprints are all over the drama using Matero Member of Parliament, Miles Sampa, who is reportedly masquerading as PF president.
Speaking to Journalists at the Magistrate Court after appearing in one of his cases on Monday in Lusaka, the SP leader argued that there was no way Hichilema can hide from what was happening to the PF.
“It is a desperate way of trying to create a one party state. This multiparty democracy, people fought for it. There was multiparty democracy at independence, it disappeared. After some time, people realized we could not continue with one party state, and they fought for it,” he said.
M’membe said Hichilema and his friends did not participate in the reintroduction of multiparty politics and may not like the PF but the former ruling party had a right to exist, whether they liked it or not.
“I was one of them. I was one of the people who went to Garden Hotel on July 20 and July 21, 1990 and waged struggle to have a multiparty political dispensation back. We will not allow to see the destruction of something people strived for, for a long and in a difficult way. Hakainde was not there,” he said.
M’membe said the PF did not exist at the mercy or discretion of the UPND because multiparty politics was about competing for power.
He said the destruction of the PF was not just about the former ruling party but about all Zambians.
“Some of them were even getting into deals before they got into government. Support us, give us money, when we get into government we will give you contracts to supply oil, we will give you contracts to supply fertilizer. They had even the audacity to sign such agreements before getting into power, this is the kind of government you have.” M’membe said.
He said whatever problem the PF might have had cannot justify what happened especially that there was no organisation without problems and that the UPND had numerous challenges even before it came into power.
“Does it justify the destruction of the UPND? Which institution in this country doesn’t have problems? Even the churches have got problems, can that justify the destruction of the church,” M’membe asked?
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