RESPONSE TO FRED M’MEMBE’S BASELESS CLAIMS OF CORRUPTION WITHOUT ANY GRAIN OF TRUTH- Mark Simuwe

RESPONSE TO FRED M’MEMBE’S BASELESS CLAIMS OF CORRUPTION WITHOUT ANY GRAIN OF TRUTH

By Mark Simuwe.

Fred M’membe has continued with his malice and lopsided reasoning to deceive citizens after his party got bashed in all recent by-elections.

Clearly, Fred is failing to persuade citizens . Unfortunately, he cannot listen to himself .

UPND has so far won about 44 by – elections out of the 47 by-elections held in two years .

Fred will never tell you how bad his political record has been with Socialist party , in the past two years , and he will never tell citizens why they are refusing to believe in his deceit .

Perhaps dealing with his tantrums , one at a time , will suffice :

CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS

Fred is deliberately trying to deceive citizens and make them forget about the recently published corruption perceptions index survey by the Transparency International which shows that the fight against corruption under the UPND leadership has improved by a wide margin , after years of struggling to fight corruption under the PF .

Fred is trying to change facts through deceit .

Fred M’membe is back with his blackmail by alleging corruption without stating who stole what and from who ?

As usual , in his Post-newspaper blackmail behavior ,Fred has continued fishing in the dark, trying to be relevant using irrelevant and lopsided information.

Just like the Swedish Ambassador, Fred has failed to demonstrate corruption activities and is busy trying to hoodwink unsuspecting citizens without stating who stole what and from who .

The claims by Fred are in conflict with available researched data on Zambia especially in the area of the fight against corruption.

Just like Fred is failing to convincingly raise alarm on corruption, by failing to cite who stole what and from who , the Socialist Party leaders like Dr Musumali are busy swimming in Fred M’membe’s muddy waters of propaganda.

Clearly, Fred has no message for citizens, as I have continued to state.

As indicated by the UKA ( UKWA) party, Fred is not saleable and he has never been . UKA(UKWA) Party went on further to state ,” it is good that Fred is not part of UKA because had he been part of it , there could have been more confusion, says Saboi,” end of quote .

From being bashed in the previous by-elections , Fred has now turned to continued hallucinations and propaganda with his colleague Dr Musumali , who alleged that UPND wants to be entrenched by creating by-elections .

What Dr Musumali is missing is that councilors with qualifications have opted to be recruited under the Ministry of Education because under the PF to which Fred M’membe belonged , there was employment freeze.

Fred also made reference to Hon Kakubo in his propaganda conversation of corruption ; to date , Fred has failed to state what corruption activity or offence Hon Kakubo committed .
Further , for avoidance of doubt , assuming Kakubo committed an offence ; Fred has not told us whether the alleged private transaction reported involved public funds, and what was stolen and from who !

Interestingly , UPND is not like Fred’s PF where people were found with Ukwa bags full of money which they could not even bank .

Additionally, citizens should be reminded that UPND has scored on the Transparency International survey on corruption perceptions index by four points , and this successful record in less than two , must certainly shame Fred .

Further ,under the UPND , Zambia has been able successfully raise revenue of over K122billion in 2023 , against the target of about k113billion . This is a successful record which was attained through prudence in the collection of revenue , which revenue under the PF , went into packets of those caught with UKWA bags , and being in possession of properties suspected to be proceeds of crime .

Clearly , Fred is unable to use empirical evidence to pin down the UPND agenda on the fight against corruption.

Fred should also disclose why he travels out everytime a by -election is announced. Fred himself has allegedly been receiving money from those he dupes using his window dressing socialist messages. Sadly , Fred does not believe in socialism because this is the man who ran a capitalist postnewspaper .

Fred even got cornered by Zambia Revenue Authority ( ZRA ) after the post allegedly failed to remit ‘pay as you earn’, among other taxes ; a clear anti-socialist behavior – because that money could have helped the poor.

Besides , Socialism believes in profit sharing, yet Fred evaded that . He should come out clean on this Postnewspaper ZRA battle .

TRANSPARENCY IN FERTILIZER TENDER BIDDING

For those who may not know , there are many types of tender bidding allowed at law .

Without wasting time for readers , let me simply itemize some of the types of legal tender bidding in the procurement process for the purpose of this article , without defining each of them in the meantime . And government decides to use any of them :

1.Open tendering
2.Online bidding
3. Negotiated tendering
4. Academic bidding
Bid
5. Request for quotations
6. Two-stage tendering
7. Selective tendering
8. Auction bids
9. Closed bidding
10. Contract

11. Civil works procurement
12. Combinatorial auction
13. Contract closeout
14. Evaluation of bids

Note that all the above are legal and government decides which one to use as long as the procurement process is not rigid or statute bound on the one used .

Fred has failed to demonstrate what law has been broken in the procurement process because there are many types of tender bidding which government uses .

We challenge him to demonstrate which law has been broken .

In trying to be relevant to the Swedish Ambassador, Fred is discussing unverified information which does not make sense .

COST OF LIVING

Fred has also failed to demonstrate that the challenges currently faced are as a result of Fred and his colleagues reckless borrowing. They ran down the economy . They found mealie meal at k37 and took it to k280 ; without shame they want to be angels today . They found fuel prices at around k5 but took it K18 and they can today come to mock citizens as if they have solutions to their mess . They found Kwacha at K5 , but took it to K 23 , the highest percentage ever from independence , because it means this was over 400% increase .

MINES THAT ALMOST RAN AWAY

Fred is at it again here . He does not know why mines retrenched workers to reduce their expenditure under the PF . Clearly , they reduced on production of copper because increase in copper production requires pumping in so much money , yet mines were no longer willing to invest more money due to policy inconsistency .

Insecurity grew under the PF that workers in mines lost jobs through retrenchments.

Fred’s observation on mining investment is disjointed because he has also failed to demonstrate which mine is on tax holiday. Further , it is the investment in the mining sector which has improved our Kwacha .

To the contrary , Fred failed to attend to statutory obligations in his Postnewspaper , and is a wrong person to talk about mines . When you listen to Fred , you would think he is saying something when he is saying nothing . The same mines Fred is referring to once gave him contracts and advertised in the Postnewspaper . Let him tell us how he lost the contracts .

He supported bad mining policies under the PF and praised the mines . It was okay with the mines at that time because it worked for him . Today , he wants to present that mines are not contributing enough . Really ?

Fred has no moral right to comment on his own mess under the PF . If Fred was paying the right taxes and not failing to remit under the Postnewspaper , citizens could have used that money to service the loans .