LUSAKA Province UPND chairperson Obvious Mwaliteta says affiliation to the party will not save any wrong doer.
Featuring on Diamond Television’s Breakfast Show in Lusaka yesterday, Mwaliteta said the party will not tolerate cadres who will go in markets and bus stations to harass people.
“No need for the cadres to go to the markets, bus stations, and start harassing people and looting. We can’t tolerate that. But this looting is not from us. It’s coming from thugs who are taking advantage of the situation,” he said. “But we want to urge the police to arrest everyone doing so – whether it’s the UPND cadres found wanting lock them up. No one will come and save them because we have warned them and even if it is another camp or another person as long as he has gone against the law arrest them. No one will defend lawlessness.”
Mwaliteta added that the UPND government wants to bring sanity in the country.
“We want to bring sanity in this country. We want to bring this country back to normal. This issue of cadreism should come to an end,” he said. “But this does not mean we don’t want cadres. But we want cadres who are going to be productive. And our cadres from the time we started they have been so good. This is why we have delivered this victory because they have been so well behaved. But we don’t want them to be infiltrated with bad cadres who just want to join them today and paint a bad picture on UPND. We won’t allow that. That’s why we want police to take charge.”
And Mwaliteta revealed that some PF cadres were trying to persuade their UPND counterparts to attack officials from the former ruling party who have money.
“They (PF cadres) are demanding money from their leaders whom they feel have money, so they want to use our cadres to help them. But our youths have come to us and said ‘this is what it is. [That] we have been approached by PF to harass their leaders who have money’. So we have stopped that,” said Mwaliteta. “And we want to tell PF cadres that things have changed from the moment HH (Hakainde Hichilema) was declared President-elect. This is a different ball game. We are not going to tolerate because we have received information that some bus drivers in bus stations have started chasing each other. But there is no need to do that. Let the drivers operate normally. Let the marketeers do their normal business.”