HH should not be in a hurry to reduce cost of mealie meal – Nevers
By Fanny Kalonda
MMD president Nevers Mumba says President Hakainde Hichilema should not be in a hurry to reduce the cost of mealie meal as it is not economics.
He said President Hichilema must hold on to the difficult life for a while until the economic fundamentals are stabilised.
Mumba argued that if President Hichilema fails, “he is not going to fail because he is not doing the right thing but because his government is not communicating with the Zambian people and taking them along in resolving problems”.
“And it’s understandable they are a new government so I think for me, my support for this government is that they are dealing with the vitals to make sure that those things that have disabled the Zambian people are put back together. I think that he has not answered all the problems and he should not be in a hurry to reduce the mealie meal prices. That is not economics,” he said when he featured on Capital FM on Tuesday. “Even if he went today and reduced the mealie meal prices, and increased the salaries of civil servants, the police and everybody else to satisfy what everybody is saying, he will collapse just like the PF collapsed the economy. He is an economist and he is saying, you know what, we have to hold on to this difficult life for a while until the fundamentals of inflation, the fundamentals of interest rates, the fundamentals of our debt are dealt with and stabilised.”
Mumba said people who call him a bootlicker and a praise singer do not understand what he is doing.
And Mumba said Michael Sata was a populist president who wanted to please people and rolled out good ideas without reference to the state envelop.
“A lot of times people that are just doing simple childish politics would like to raise issues. I have been in politics for 25 years, 26, and when people try to say ‘no Nevers is a boot licker, Nevers is a praise singer’, they probably don’t understand who I am and what I am doing. When president Michael Sata became president, my opposition of his leadership was not because he was not from my region. I opposed him to the extent that I felt that he was more of a populist president who wanted to please people that if they say that mealie meal is K55, we want mealie meal to come down, without looking at the envelop of the country he goes ahead and does that. We want this to be done, we want more districts, he just rolled out good ideas which will make people clap for him without any reference to the envelop, state envelop that we were using in terms of what we had as a country,” Mumba said. “So what has been the result of that kind of leadership, that kind of leadership brought us to a place where we ended with close to 30 billion dollars, according to the World Bank, debt. This is a mess in which we are. And to me I am shocked that our colleagues in the PF can even have that strength to begin to act like they were doing the right thing. We are where we are because of them. Now that does not excuse President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND from quickly getting to work than doing the staff that has been done against the Zambian people and against the economy of this country.”
He noted that President Hichilema and his administration are not communicating with the Zambian people.
“This President has to make sure he resolves a problem that was created by the last administration. It is going to take time and I want to make this very very clear, if President Hakainde Hichilema fails, he is not going fail because he is not doing the right thing. He is going to fail because he is not communicating or his government is not communicating with the Zambian people and taking them along in resolving the problems that he didn’t create,” Mumba said. “The only missing thing right now is that the UPND government needs to put in place a communication system which is robust, vicious and clear. Not try to speak down on people who are challenging them or condemning them but to start to tell the Zambian people ‘this is the problem we are all facing. High rentals, we are facing high commodity prices, we are facing issues of limited jobs in the economy, this is what we are doing about it and here we are with the same people that have benefited from the programme we are doing and we are going to do more’. They have got to have a robust communication system. I must say unfortunately, that is not working as fast and as well as it should.”
Mumba said the new dawn administration has a very bad culture of not communicating to Zambians.
He said ministers and permanent secretaries have disconnected themselves from the Zambian people.
“And the issue here is that if HH is going to fail, it’s not because he is not doing the right thing. He is on the right track. If he is going to fail, it’s a lack of communication with the Zambian people to take them along. There is a very bad culture of this administration and for me because President HH is my friend, I don’t include him in this issue. If I send him a message now, he may not reply now but very shortly he is going to reply to me. But I am finding the fact that this government especially the ministers, especially those in PS positions, they have disconnected themselves with the Zambian people,” he noted. “You try it, you go home, get the list of Cabinet ministers or get a list of PSs and call them. From the 24, if you get three to respond to you, you are blessed. That’s the way it is right now, they think within themselves. They need to sit down and answer the question, who are they to serve? So this government must sit down and begin to reconnect with the Zambian people. If they cannot answer my phone, who is former vice-president, what chance has a guy in Chinsali or Mulakupikwa got to be answered by a minister? Zero.”
Mumba said the government needs to talk about what they are doing to rectify the problems that Zambians are facing and explain why there is a delay in decreasing the prices of essential commodities.
He said if that is not done, “someone will take advantage of the situation”.
“It’s really bothering people because a number of people that believe that Nevers and the President are friends, so they will call me, ‘we can’t get through to his government, to his ministers they don’t reply. They don’t respond to text’. I just tell them let’s just keep trying because if they don’t respond some of them are my own sons in the Lord… since they became what they have become they don’t respond,” Mumba said. “This government needs to talk about what they are doing to rectify the problems and tell the Zambians why there is a delay in the decrease in the price of essential commodities. If they don’t do that somebody will get in there like a Michael Sata and he is going to take advantage of what people are feeling now and not what you are working on for tomorrow. I think what the President needs to do is to have a meeting with his team and tell them ‘we are here because the Zambian people trust that we can represent them and we are not here just to talk to ourselves on the phone. Talk to those people who are doing business with us, we are here to answer the ordinary phone call’.”
Mumba said a non-working cabinet is a danger to any head of state as the President cannot succeed alone.
“The problem we have now, the President doesn’t have to fire them, the President needs to sit with them and say, ‘this is the problem, we are not communicating with the people’. If they continue at this rate they will be totally cut off from the issues happening on the ground because the problems being faced by Zambians is not going to be catalogued by the so-called important rich friends that you go to the clubs with,” Mumba said. “Talk back to the people. It’s very important for Zambians to feel that their leaders can lift up their phone or can answer the phone or respond to their text messages. It is not happening now. The truth is that a non-working cabinet is a danger to any head of state and that is why the Constitution gives the President powers to reshuffle his Cabinet. The President alone cannot succeed. That is not how governance is.”