Patrick Samwimbila Munali aka Guy Wapa Eaze wrote
A FEW THOUGHTS FOR YOU MR. PRESIDENT
At least on a Sunday and the first Sunday of the year for that matter, I would like to share some honest and objective thoughts with President HH.
1. Sir, in this new year please reduce on self-praise and boasting; Its like you are insulated and you are out of touch with reality. Try for once to listen to the common people on ground and to your critics, you will realize that everything you boast about have no impact on the lives of our people.
2. Sir we are proud your farms and animals are doing very well, we have also just seen the State House and Presidential Affairs budget for this year standing at about 21.17 Million US Dollars which is really very fat. So Mr President I implore you to try hard to better things in the nation so that your citizens can also live a dignified life. Please find solutions to the choking high cost of living, work had to stabilize the exchange rate (Dollar @ 26 is too much). Zambia has never experienced such harsh conditions of living and of doing business before.
3. Sir, please stop sounding like Zambians have never worked hard, they are all lazy and have no capacity to think and choose how best to manage their lives. Lectures about buying tractors, keeping animals, or buying center pivots are not for everyone. Just create an enabling business environment and people will invest differently in their businesses of choice and size. Create meaningful empowerment programs for our youths who voted for you on the promises that their weekends will be lit.
4. Sir, please protect our democratic space from shrinking further; put a stop to the emerging dictatorial indicators your party and most critical institutions of governance are championing. Imagine the idea of denying opposition political parties the opportunity to hold public rallies, imagine the illegal disqualification of eligible candidates from contesting in by – elections, imagine mingalato of sponsoring divisions in opposition political parties, imagine the arbitrary arrests of members of opposition and anyone with opposing views. Please listen to voice of the church and civil society organizations. Stop silencing them by calling them names or aligning them to the former ruling party.
5. Sir, please lead by example to unite the nation. Stop this talk that blackmails the good people of Southern Province to think that other tribes hate them and that they were segregated against during the previous regimes. You like repeating these words every time and then; during your 4 hours close of the year presser and during your rally at Masuku grounds in Choma you kept emphasizing the same sentiments, please stop it you are now the President for all.
6. Please Sir, this year kindly reduce on your international travels because it is a huge drain on the already crawling economy. It’s better for you to seek homegrown solutions by calling an indaba of all local experts in different fields, opposition political parties, the church, civil society, the Chiefs and other interest groups regardless of their political affiliation in order to brainstorm and find lasting solutions to the many problems the country is faced with. I SUBMIT.
I pray you will have a chance to read these thoughts, but alas! because of the insulation I have refered to, your gatekeepers will not share it with you.