CHIFUNABULI PF member of parliament Mecha Ponde has charged that those who are tagging PF MPs and ministers with corruption want to bring the ruling party down.
And Ponde has alleged that PF enemies are falsely accusing and “hard working” ministers close to President Edgar Lungu of corruption so that he remains without pillars.
In an interview with The Mast, Ponde said there was a lot of rumour mongering fashioned by the opposition against PF because the ruling party was delivering on its promises.
He said with improved service delivery and infrastructure development in place, the opposition had no chance of winning any election.
“Zambia is going into an election next year and obviously you expect a lot of rumour mongering to be happening in the country. It’s a pity that the Zambian media platform is characterised by immense abuse of expression which we have not arrested. Basically when you know that the ruling party is doing good things and you stand no chance of winning an election, you come up with all sorts of strategies to try and bring that particular party down, which is the case of PF at the moment,” Ponde said.
“You know there is a lot of development taking place in Zambia in terms of infrastructure development and so many things. Right now we are getting reports that fertiliser is being distributed into districts, which is a plus to the country and no opposition party has actually commended the PF for that. Their focus is to try and bring down the PF government, to try and bring the PF MPs and ministers down, that is their preoccupation.”
Ponde said Zambia had many ‘social media judges’ who want to crucify people on the basis of corruption allegations before they are tried by the courts of law.
He said those with sufficient evidence on corruption should report to ACC than to continue scandalising innocent people on social media.
“If 10 ministers are reported to ACC, or indeed to DEC or other investigative wings, people will obviously judge that you are corrupt which shouldn’t be the case. There is presumption of innocence until proven guilty. But we don’t respect that despite it being in our legal framework. So once they lay any allegations on anyone, you are still innocent. The people who can say that you are guilty are the courts of law,” he said.
Ponde warned that PF members fall prey to plans and strategies of their enemies that want President Lungu to drop hard working ministers so that they could easily remove the party from power.
“What is happening is that people are trying to eliminate the hardworking ministers from the President so that the President remains alone without pillars. So, they want to uproot him starting with all these false allegations against hardworking people, which is very unfortunate,” he said.
When asked to indicate whether PF was corrupt or not, Ponde said no minister or member of PF had been jailed by the courts of law for corruption.
“How do you determine whether PF is corrupt or not? That can only be determined by the courts of law. So how many people have the courts prosecuted successfully? They are very few. How many PF ministers have been prosecuted successfully? None of them. So which PF are we talking about? Those who are shouting loud should take the corrupt people to the investigative wing. So, those are just songs that people are singing, which anyone can sing because they are very easy to sing,” said Ponde as he laughed.
He appealed to the PF membership to remain strong and continue reorganising the party for 2021.
Ponde further advised President Lungu to continue standing strong and firm as he governs the country.
“The only advice to the President is for him to remain firm the way he has been and objective. He is very objective, that is why he doesn’t even fire people anyhow. If he was not objective, he would have fired so many people on the basis of rumour,” said Ponde.