IT’S FAILURE AND DESPERATION FOR PF TO START BRIBING PEOPLE – John Sangwa SC
It is an indictment of failure and desperation when you start bribing people to vote for you, because you would not be distributing money if you have delivered, says State Counsel John Sangwa.
And Sangwa said Zambians deserve substantive debates from those seeking office, indicating that while PF has failed to deliver, those seeking to take over must provide practical solutions on how they will improve matters, rather than just vaguely issuing promissory statements.
Featuring on Radio Phoenix’s Let the People Talk programme this morning, Sangwa said if Zambian voters were stupid they would have voted retain former president Rupiah Banda into office in 2011, as he had more money than opposition leader then Michael Sata.
He said the people however, ate Banda’s money and voted against him, saying he believed the same could happen in 2021.
Sangwa said there should be a law to regulate how much money should be spent on an election, adding that the party in power inevitably enjoyed financial power, but there was no guarantee that money would translate into votes.
He questioned the genuiness of the same as money that was well earned could be used more responsibly.
“It shows desperation because if you have delivered you wouldn’t be distributing money,” Sangwa said during a radio programme monitored by Daily Revelation, adding that a government that had delivered simply needed to point to tangible things like jobs created and improvements in the economy, but to resort to bribing voters showed the failure to perform. “You start bribing voters, any reasonable voter will know ‘you will give me chitenge today, but am I going to eat chitenge’…it’s indictment of failure to start bribing voters…if you have delivered you wouldn’t be bribing them.”
Sangwa said “you won’t come up with crazy ideas like empowerment”, as doing so meant that one had failed but that they were going to do everything in their power to remain in power.
He said when politicians were singing “more money in your pockets”, the people must be intelligent enough to ask how that would happen, saying building three to five bridges in Lusaka does not equate to development.
He said the PF must provide figures and statistics to backup their claims that they had delivered, saying people must compare the state of affairs now to the way things were 10 years ago before the ruling party assumed office.
“There is no way a sensible person would say things are better,” Sangwa said, arguing that the government’s stated foreign debt position was US$12 billion, yet president Banda left it at only US$750 million.
He said he wanted to hear how the PF would carry out national development while servicing such a huge debt, and that this was a big issue but he had not heard from the PF, UPND and other parties how they would address this critical matter.
“How do you say you have delivered when you keep on adding debt?…you haven’t delivered, you have failed.