PF’S RECORD EXPOSES HOLLOW TONSE POVERTY CLAIMS – MUSOKOTWANE
Former Minister of Finance, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane has taken aim at the Tonse Alliance’s claim to prioritise Zambia’s poor, arguing in The Mast this morning that the party’s PF roots tell a very different story.
Dr Musokotwane contends that the Alliance is an offshoot of the Patriotic Front, sharing both its methods and its habit of making promises it cannot keep. “If PF had cared for poor people, they would have done so in the ten years they ruled,” he writes.
Central to his argument is the mining sector. Dr Musokotwane recalls how KCM, Mopani, First Quantum and Barrick were either closing or heading that way under the PF, leaving mining cities as “ghost towns, unleashing unprecedented poverty.” He asks pointedly which poor people the PF was protecting while shuttering the mines.
By contrast, he points to mines reopening under the UPND, alongside revived operations at Luanshya Shaft 28, Lubambe and Kalengwa, and new mines at Ming’omba in Chililabombwe and Kitumba in Mumbwa.
On education, Dr Musokotwane notes school enrolment has climbed by roughly 2.5 million children since free education began, arguing these were pupils locked out under the PF because their parents could not pay.
He also highlights retirement benefit waiting times falling from 42 months to 13, and an end to the market lawlessness that once forced farmers to surrender produce to PF cadres.
Dr Musokotwane concludes that the Alliance has “clothed their old PF party into the sheep skin of a new name,” warning voters a Tonse government would repeat the same failures.