Let HH interact with people, know what they’re going through – Sensele
By Edwin Mbulo in Livingstone
INTERACT with local Zambians at grassroots level to understand their sufferings, former Livingstone district commissioner Paul Sensele advises President Hakainde Hichilema.
In an interview, Sensele a member of the NDC central committee, which is in alliance with the ruling UPND, said MMD president Nevers Mumba should let Michael Sata rest in peace instead of calling him names such as a popularist president.
“Let’s call a spade a spade, Michael Sata was a great leader. He knew Zambia on his finger tips. He loved his people and never wanted anyone to suffer. He knew nearly all Zambians even ward leaders and he interacted with them including the UPND-Alliance leaders,” he said. “So my advise is let even HH find time to interact with leaders at ward level so as to know what people are going through.”
Sensele however, noted that the economic problems that Zambia was experiencing were not for “HH alone to resolve”.
He said people need to understand the background to the high mealie meal prices as there was poor rainfall in 2021/2022 rain season.
He accused Mumba of abandoning former MMD leaders he had served with.
“Michael Sata was not a popularist president, he only appreciated his people and the only qualification was for one to work hard. Look at Judge Ngoma and myself, he made me a DC all because of hard work,” said Sensele. “Nevers Mumba needs to be reminded that the developmental works he is enjoying today together with the UPND were Sata’s initiative. The only problem was that those who took over from him missapplied the resources.”
Recently when he featured on Capital FM, Mumba said Sata was a populist president who wanted to please people and rolled out good ideas without reference to the state envelop.
“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,” said Mumba. “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.”