PRESS STATEMENT
23 RD NOVEMBER 2021
PF MUST FOCUS ON HOLDING A CONVENTION NOT ANOTHER CIVIL WAR
Next year PF will be holding its extra ordinary convention to elect its party President and other officials. We hope that PF has repented its sins of stealing, cadrelism, arrogance and brutality as highlighted in its postmortem report on why PF lost the August election. We wish PF the best of luck to emerge a much stronger opposition party and offer credible checks and balances. PF in its current form is much more disorganized, hopeless and lacks credible leadership.
In 2015 PF conducted the most chaotic intra party election in the history of this Country. It’s this chaotic intra party “election” that ushered in Mr. Lungu as PF presidential candidate in 2015. Delegates to this chaotic conference voted by show of hands, legs and pangas instead of secret ballot. Because Mr. Lungu was a product of this chaotic intra party convention, even his leadership as Republican President was chaotic.
PF has continued exhibiting signs of hooliganism and lawlessness; this may be carried on to the next year’s convention. The way PF cadres behaved at the memorial service of the late President Sata (MHSRIP), goes to confirm that PF is not ready to reform. A Memorial service is a solemn event that calls for sober and orderly behavior. It’s likely that next year’s convention could be worse than the one they held in Kabwe in 2015.The PF warlords may again turn the convention into a civil war as the case was in 2015 and go back to show of hands, legs and pangas as a means of choosing their next President.
Bad habits die hard; we know it’s extremely difficult for some PF members to stop stealing, arrogance, brutality and lawlessness. This is the more reason why we feel that chances of PF ignoring the good tenets of democracy at next year’s convention are very high. PF should start focusing on organizing a convention instead of a civil war. This could to lead to a situation where PF could just remain on the paper. UPND does not want to kill PF, PF will be killed by its poor leadership. The convention will be a make or break for PF
Percy Chanda
UPND – Chairman for Mines and freedom fighters