Mundubile claims PF invented free education, says UPND merely “swept up the K200 crumbs”

Mundubile claims PF invented free education, says UPND merely “swept up the K200 crumbs”

NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile has unveiled what may be Zambia’s boldest mathematical achievement yet: proving that removing K1,800 deserves a standing ovation, while removing the last K200 only qualifies as tidying up.

Mpulungu, 4 July- Addressing supporters in Mpulungu, the former Leader of the Opposition argued that the Patriotic Front deserves full ownership of Zambia’s free education policy because it performed the heavy lifting by slashing school fees from K2,000 to K200. According to Mundubile, the current administration simply arrived with a metaphorical dustpan to sweep away the remaining K200 and declared itself the architect of free education.

“We introduced free education. We found it at K2,000 and reduced it to K200. We reduced it by K1,800. Our friends brag that they introduced free education when all they have done is remove the remaining K200,” Mundubile said, inviting the nation to appreciate the difference between building a bridge and painting its guardrails.

The NRPUP candidate insisted that history should remember the PF as the pioneers of free education, arguing that eliminating 90 percent of a cost is apparently the same as eliminating all of it, only with better campaign material.

“We removed K1,800, they removed K200. We will continue with the free education we started,” he declared, in what economists are already describing as “the politics of percentage

The remarks have added fresh fuel to Zambia’s never-ending contest over who deserves credit for government programmes. It is a debate where every administration claims to have planted the tree, while the next one insists it merely watered it, fertilised it, and occasionally remembered to remove the last stubborn weed.

Political observers say the country’s free education debate has increasingly resembled a relay race in which every runner insists they crossed the finish line first, despite all carrying the same baton at different times.

As politicians continue arguing over who deserves the certificate of originality, parents and pupils appear to remain more interested in a simpler equation: whether school remains free tomorrow than who first discovered that K2,000 minus K2,000 equals zero.

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