THE PF says NDC national chairperson Fr Richard Luonde has no moral right to call President Edgar Lungu’s leadership a curse on the country.
The ruling party argues that, “President Lungu is a Christian and an honest man. He has been a blessing to Zambia. He has brought good to Zambia and not misery.”
On Monday, The Mast published a story in which Fr Luonde reviewed 2020 and bemoaned several challenges, which he said resulted mostly from poor leadership.
He said President Lungu had brought more harm than good to the country.
“In the struggle for independence, a lot of Zambians lost their lives just to free us from the colonialists. This freedom is now being misused by the hungry vultures who have no heart for fellow Zambians but themselves. The election of President Edgar Lungu in 2015 and 2016 has brought more suffering never experienced before since independence,” said Fr Luonde in a statement. “If anyone thinks that President Lungu has been a blessing to our country, they are wrong. To the contrary, the Lungu presidency has been a curse to our country because it has brought more harm than good to all sectors of our economy. The good governance record we have held in the region for many years has been wiped out by his dictatorship. This is the only President in our history who has thrown out the rule of law and replaced it with cadreism without shame. Zambians can’t wait to kick him out in next year’s elections so that we save the little pride there is left in our governance credentials.”
But Lusaka Province PF secretary Kennedy Kamba described Fr Luonde as a disaster.
“Instead of the ex-Anglican priest Richard Luonde calling President Lungu’s reign as a curse, the opposite is what is true. The former Anglican priest Richard Luonde is a definition of a disaster, a curse himself, who has no moral right to put to ridicule President Edgar Lungu’s name,” Kamba said. “President Lungu is a good person, a warm-hearted person who loves Zambia and its people to the core. President Lungu is working extra hard in these very difficult times the world is going through to ensure that the country is safe and people have enough to eat.”
He said President Lungu was also busy trying to spread development across the country.
Kamba said Fr Luonde’s observation was provocative to the ruling party, especially that the Head of State was working hard for the nation.
“The President is also working round the clock to ensure that developmental projects and programmes reached all corners of Zambia. We, therefore, find it extremely appalling and highly provocative that Richard Luonde has continued to call the PF and President Edgar Lungu all sorts of names and insults,” Kamba said. “Today in one of the daily tabloids, he is saying President Lungu’s presidency is a curse to the country. We know that these are irrational attempts by frustrated politicians like Luonde, to try and discredit President Lungu ahead of this year’s general elections. What Luonde should know is that President Lungu is unmatched, he is by far beyond the quality of their preferred opposition candidate.”
He insisted that President Lungu would win this year’s elections.
Kamba said to the contrary, President Lungu had been a blessing to the country.
“We have said time and again that people like Fr Luonde, with all due respect, have no moral right to call President Lungu names when he has failed to manage himself and his life as a priest which led to his dismissal from priesthood,” Kamba said.
“President Lungu is a Christian and an honest man. He has been a blessing to Zambia. He has brought good to Zambia and not misery. Luonde is just hallucinating. We have for a long time ignored Fr Luonde because we don’t want to be fighting people, especially those who are clergy aligned or affiliated because in our cultural and social set up we respect men of God.”
And Kamba doubted if Fr Luonde would stay long in the NDC.
According to him, Fr Luonde had no clearly defined ideology.
“Luonde’s moral standing is highly questionable! His hands are not clean and he has no moral right to go to the media and issue unsubstantiated remarks or to ridicule the Head of State. Fr Luonde has chosen a path of politics, jumping from one party to another,” said Kamba. “He was a PF sympathiser. He jumped to Rainbow Party, he became a socialist and joined Dr Fred M’membe and today Fr Luonde is in Chishimba Kambwili’s party, the NDC where he has been given a position of chairperson. Fr Luonde will not even stay in that NDC. His personal agenda is something else. He does not even believe in any ideology because if he did, he would have stayed may be in the Socialist Party. We say this because one cannot be both, a socialist and a capitalist. That’s confusion!”