By Ulande Nkomesha,
SHIWANG’ANDU PF member of parliament Stephen Kampyongo says PF members are ready to answer any allegations against them, but the actions taken by the UPND government should not be vindictive.
Giving an overview of 2021 in an interview, Monday, Kampyongo who is also Party Whip in Parliament, accused the UPND of trying to humiliate former ministers under the PF administration.
“So last year was of course a very interesting year, with mixed emotions and mixed challenges. I don’t mind that law enforcement agencies are doing their work as they are mandated to do but it also must be appreciated in as much as I can’t comment on matters that are before the courts, that actions that seem to be humiliating people that held critical offices of this country should not be ignored.
It is one thing to just humiliate an individual who was just minister of defence, who was Home Affairs minister for about five years. What precedence are you setting?” Kampyongo asked.
“Yes no one is above the law, but I think it is important that we appreciate the role of some of these offices that people get to occupy. For me, we are available to answer for anything that is alleged against us and through the processes, but we must be mindful to avoid actions that will be seen to be vindictive in nature or vengeance for unknown reasons.”
Kampyongo said the last months in 2021 were difficult for the party.
“I also feel as whip of the opposition Patriotic Front, it was a difficult time, we received a lot of new members who could have been settling down and getting to perform their mandate of offering checks and balances as elected representatives of the people from various constituencies.
What we saw is again something that is subtracting from our democracy. Yes it is good to allow people that could have lost to use the courts, but for the first time in history we saw petitions that even included councilors at that level.
Now the question is, were these so-called irregularities only recorded in the areas where PF won? Certainly, the answer is no!” he said.
“What was even much more of a concern for me was to see nine of our members whose petitions were not successful at the High Court and rightly they went to the Concourt but before their issue could be heard they were thrown out of Parliament, which had never happened before.
So we are patiently waiting to see how the Constitutional Court will look at these matters and we shall obviously as law abiding citizens appreciate the decisions of the court.”
On President Hakainde Hichilema’s New Year message that it would take hard work and concerted effort to rebuild the country and that some sacrifices would be hard to stomach, Kampyongo said the President should be truthful on whether the promises he made during the campaign period were attainable.
“Again we understand and we agree that it is not going to be easy and it wouldn’t be any easier for any government. Managing state affairs has never been easier. What I would have loved myself and speaking as a representation of the people of Shiwang’andu, I would have loved him to say ‘look, I promised people some of these good things, but with the current situation we are facing, we are not going to fulfill those promises, and people bear with us for not seemly beginning by fulfilling our promises’.
It could have been easier, that way people would have understood. If he ignores what he was promising personally, and no one will carry a cross for him,” said Kampyongo.
“There are so many people who are articulating issues of what is going to happen, his Ministers speaking on his behalf. He is the cross-carrier himself, he should have come back to the people of Zambia and said ‘yes I promised to remove cartels from the fuel supply chain, I promised to lower the price of fuel, I promised to lower the prices of input, I promised that Zesco tariffs were going to be lowered because it is a necessity, it is not a luxury but now that I have assumed office I do realise that there were challenges I couldn’t see when I was in the opposition.
But now I am here and I am able to see things differently. So people of Zambia bear with me’, then it would have been a message that was going to speak to the people. But to just say that it is going to be tough to build the economy, people will say ‘but sir, you had a catalog of promises, what has happened to those catalog of promises?’
Because it is not as if you were living outside Zambia, you didn’t know the challenges that Zambia was facing?”