THE ILLUSION OF PURE CAPITALISM THAT IS DEVOID OF SUBSIDIES: THE CASE OF A TRAITOR OR JUST A NAIVE INCOMPETENT MISFIT?
By Sean Tembo – PeP President
1. President Hakainde Hichilema is one of two things; either he is a traitor who is hell-bent to totally destroy the Zambian economy in collaboration with his Western puppet masters, or he is so naive and incompetent that he believes in the illusion of pure capitalism that is devoid of any sort of subsidies as peddled by Western puppet masters through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
2. As we speak right now, all key production inputs such as fuel and electricity have been hiked to unaffordable levels under the guise of cost-reflective prices and ostensibly peddled by Western puppet masters such as the IMF. This has not only skyrocketed the cost of living, but has also destroyed the productive capacity of our economy. The same productive capacity that we are supposed to be growing if we are going to turnaround and grow our economy. Examples of the destruction of our productive capacity are abundant, including the recent closure of more than 50 Manganese mines across the country because they cannot afford ZESCO’s absurd new tariffs.
3. Look here, if we had a serious Government in office, it would have realized that ZESCO does not need to increase its tariffs in order to make them cost-reflective. What ZESCO needs to do is to increase the efficiency of it’s operations and cut the pilferage of financial resources that is done through exaggerated tender prices and ridiculously high salaries and allowances for senior Management, the majority of whom are well-known UPND party members or brothers, sisters, uncle’s and aunties of President Hakainde Hichilema. If ZESCO’s inefficiency and wastage is arrested, then the consumer does not need to be punished with high tariffs and our industrial base, including the Manganese mining sector will remain intact and continue to employ the few Zambians that it currently employs.
4. Similarly, the ultimate solution to high fuel prices is two-fold. Firstly we need to construct strategic storage facilities for crude oil, which can store hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil at any given time to sustain us for at least 10 years, so that when world prices are low, as they were at the inception of the pandemic, then we can buy plenty of crude oil at cheap prices and store it. When world prices for oil are high, then we can utilize what we have in storage until the world prices drop, at which point we then replenish our strategic reserves. The second part of the solution to the high fuel prices requires the establishment of fuel processing plants in each provincial center with a network of oil pipelines from our strategic storage facilities to the provincial oil processing centers so that we reduce the cost of road transportation which is often high.
5. However, instead of developing a program of constructing INDENI plants in the other 9 provincial centers being Lusaka, Choma, Mongu, Chipata, Kasama, Mansa, Solwezi etcetera, President Hakainde Hichilema has instead decided to destroy our one and only crude oil processing facility at INDENI and converted it into a depot for imported petrol and diesel. That is the behavior of a traitor not a Republican President who cares about the future of this nation.
6. As we speak right now, the New Dawn administration is talking about cancelling the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP) and replacing it with a loan scheme were peasant farmers will be given loans which, if they fail to pay out of their harvest, then they’ll not be eligible for another loan in the next farming season. I can assure you fellow countrymen and women that this is a ploy to stop the assistance that was being rendered to vulnerable peasant farmers for more than 20 years. There is no way that a peasant farmer will be able to pay back a loan from their harvest when Government has a very erratic crop marketing policy whereby one minute they tell you to grow soya beans because a market has been secured in China, then the next minute the President tells you that his Government will not buy any soya beans. That, country men and women is not the behavior of a caring Republican President. It is the behavior of a traitor who wants to destroy every aspect of the Zambian economy.
7. If by some chance, President Hakainde Hichilema is not a traitor but is just grossly incompetent and naive to swallow the IMF bait of bad policies hook, line and sinker, then he must be so incompetent that he is probably unable to even tie his own shoe laces. Because only such a misfit can adopt and embrace the ridiculous IMF policies without questioning anything. Policies that require you to increase electricity tariffs to unaffordable levels to the extent of destroying the productive capacity of your economy. Policies that require you to strip your only crude oil processing capacity at INDENI and completely rely on the processing capacity of a neighboring country in Tanzania. Policies that require you to impoverish and starve your own peasant farmers through the withdrawal of FISP and erratic crop marketing policies which flip-flop like pata-patas.
8. In case President Hakainde Hichilema is infinitely naive to believe that there is an economy in the world that can run devoid of subsidies, he must be reminded that even the United States of America itself heavily subsidizes not only it’s various economic sectors but it’s individual citizens as well. If during the pandemic, US citizens were being given handouts of cash into their bank accounts, then why should the IMF tell us that we can’t give FISP to our most vulnerable citizens? If the US, the mother of capitalism can subsidize it’s wheat farmers when China decides to temporarily close it’s market, then why can’t we do the same. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as pure capitalism which the IMF wants to impose on us, but do not themselves practice back home. Only a traitor or a naive incompetent misfit can adopt the ridiculous IMF policies hook, line and sinker. The question is; which one of the two is President Hakainde Hichilema?
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SET 25.07.2023