For Immediate Release
Lusaka 13:03:21
OUR FEARS THAT KAMBWILI NOT PRESIDENTIAL MATERIAL VALIDATED
FRANKLIN MEMBE
Chairman for National Planning and Development and Spokeperson for NDC
Dr. Chishimba Kambwili’s attack on the MAST makes very sad reading and worrying.
Zambia enjoys Constitutionally enshrined rights to freedom of expression and the press. Top leadership of NDC have for sometime now been questioning the quality of CK to superintendent over national matters. We have long concluded in the affirmative that CK’s worth is only for campaign purposes. It is now very clear that my young brother cannot be President just as Lungu is not Presidential material. The MMD Cadre spirit of muzzling the press still hangs around Leopard CK.
Zambia is a democracy and we must accept and protect the principles of freedom of conscience and expression. The new NDC headed by Interim President RJ Akafumba has a clear strategy on how to relate to the media. Acrimony of Dr. Kambwili that made him hound out the POST news paper was a barbaric, undemocratic and ‘carderish’.
NDC considers the media as Development partners. That should remove the animosty that we see today between the state the media. History has shown that picking up battles with the media is the easiest and fastest route to self destruction. Our advice to Kambwili now is what I advised my beloved father Kenneth Kaunda when he invited me to State House in 1988: Step down now for your posterity. Your name will be glorified for making such a magnonimous decision. The old man listened and had to forego two years to which he was totally entitled.
I repeat this advice to my young brother and former President CK . Please hang up your gloves to preserve your name. I pray that you also advise your nephew I have respected till now not to make false accusations about me. I have never been convicted nor jailed in my life.
I have a very good case for defamation if character for which I may not even need a lawyer to defend me because it’s straight forward. CK Zambia needs your ‘vuvuzela’ spirit. Don’t destroy yourself now please. It’s too early. With that attitude of muzzling the press and playing hide and seek, you are not yet ripe for presidency. It’s time for HH to grab the nation from the enemies of Zambica the UNPATRIOTIC
FRONT.
Memories are still fresh how CK run the ministry of information when the Post was being printed underground for fear if the Leopard. CK ordered cadres to vandalise all Post newspaper stands. This act destroyed people’s lives especially workers some of whom even lost their
homes. We have for long expected that the ‘leopard’ will change it’s colours but alas! A leopard cannot change it’s colours. We were all wrong. When a Leopard changes it’s colours it ceases to be a leopard.