By Kombe Mataka
PRESIDENT Hakiande Hichilema says socialism has failed in economies where it was being propagated and that those propagating the ideology must be careful not to propagate things that don’t work for the economy.
Speaking at late president Frederick Chiluba’s 11th memorial service held yesterday, President Hichilema praised the second president and his courage for liberalising the economy.
“The new dawn government is proud of the vision that president Chiluba had for this country. One of the things Chiluba and his team did was to drive the liberalisation of this country’s economy. Remember one party state: Socialism, Communism, which failed. There is no question about that. Communism and socialism failed,’’ he said. ‘’It did not just fail here it failed even in the heart of communism, so when I see advancement of those issues, sometimes I say, ‘do we want to go back to shortages. We heard of the cooking oil, queuing for cooking oil’. When I got married to that lady seated (points at his wife Mutinta) there was no juice in the shops because we married in the late eighties. We couldn’t organise drinks. The Coca-Cola you take for granted today, was not there. So, I remember one of the parastatal leaders called Mantanyani tried to concoct TipTop to try and take the space of Coca-Cola and Fanta; and even that Tip-Top we had to queue to buy a crate or two. We should not lose those memories and start propagating things that can destroy the economy.”
President Hichilema aulogised Chiluba as a courageous person who took bold economic decisions.
“Dr Chiluba was courageous to move the economy into a liberal sphere, an open economy and almost automatically things started happening. And Coca-Cola reappeared. You who love Coca-Cola, if you were born in the eighties, you wouldn’t have it because it was not there because of the economic policies,’’ President Hichilema told the audience. ‘’So, I think you must learn lessons. We must build one legacy to another and carry one. The policies of a liberal economy do deliver if managed properly. The policies that we had led us to a debt contraction; leading us to a HIPC to a point where by the time president [Levy] Mwanawasa came in officer he concluded a debt write-off. Our country’s debt came down to just a billion dollars. And it is unimaginable in my ingenuity, I just couldn’t believe that we are in another debt crisis…because we don’t learn lessons. We have returned into a big hole.”
The President said it was shocking how the country had attained a debt worth over $20 billion in seven years, exclaiming that “…umm no, it’s not right. Let us learn lessons so we can serve the people better.”
He said Chiluba stood for debt reduction and that as a way of honouring him, the new dawn government would ensure the debt problem was dealt with.
“I must say I am sure he will hear the message. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, we had the first creditors meeting where all the key creditors attended. China chaired the meeting and we are on our way to restructuring the debt,” said President Hichilema. “We apologise that we messed you up along the way. What you had resolved returned with venom. You can count on us; we won’t let you down.”
And former vice-president Enock Kavindele who served under Chiluba said he was a determined person and one that could not be challenged easily.
He said Chiluba could not have died at an early stage had it not been for the pressure that had come from being prosecuted.
Former president Edgar Lungu who was invited did not attend the event.
Former first lady Vera Chiluba was also missing at the event.