By Ulande Nkomeshya
SHIWANG’ANDU PF member of parliament Stephen Kampyongo says it is irresponsible for government Chief Whip Stafford Mulusa to claim that most PF MPs go to Parliament drunk.
And Kampyongo says the party will need to “weed out” undisciplined members in order to rebrand.
In an interview, Thursday, Kampyongo who is also Party Whip in Parliament said Mulusa didn’t know his role as government Chief Whip.
“First of all, the Government Chief whip should know his role, that means, he doesn’t know his role and if he doesn’t, he has to do a lot to understand the role of the Government Whip. We are in the opposition to offer checks and balances and the nation is able to tell whether MPs are drunk.
The Zambian people are intelligent and you can’t fool them. When we point out the wrongs in the Executive, their responsibility is to address those wrongs, unless he is saying there was no reason in what we were asking them to do,” he said.
“But if you have proved and I am sure you have had a chance to look at the yellow book, it is a public document, so to try and say that, is economical with the truth.
I think we shall deal with that using the Parliamentary Procedures, I would like to have that copy. We shall deal with it following the procedures of Parliament. But that is being irresponsible because I wouldn’t say anything about fellow members of parliament in that fashion.”
Kampyongo said the PF MPs only walked out of Parliament because of the manner the proceedings were being handled.
“If themselves were coming drunk, unless you are saying each time they walked out of Parliament themselves, they were drunk. It is not the same with us. Remember the several times they had to walk [out] but it has taken us long.
There are so many things that could have made us walk out, but we have been much more magnanimous, we only walked out when we couldn’t take the manner they wanted to proceed,” he said.
And commenting on the recent dissolution of the PF Lusaka Provincial committee, Kampyongo said the party would need to “weed out” undisciplined members in order to rebrand.
“When you have two individuals or a few individuals making noise, that does not constitute grassroots. I was in my constituency myself and I inspected some of my structures and other members of parliament have done that. So, you can’t have a handful of party members making noise in the name of grassroots, it doesn’t work.
Rebranding will come with discipline, some of the things that costed us are bordering on indiscipline. We can’t say that we are going to rebrand with indisciplined members of the party. So rebranding starts with discipline,” said Kampyongo.
“Weed out indisciplined characters and then you start putting responsible people. The party is in all the 10 provinces, so if you hear noises of a few individuals in one province, it doesn’t constitute grassroots, because even grassroots need to know what is happening in the individual constituencies.
So not just a few individuals that are able to make noise on social media, it doesn’t work like that. So those who have been disciplined know the channel to appeal not to make noise on social media, it won’t help them.”