There is no way we’ll be talking, advising HH in secrecy – Kalaba
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
THE President is out of touch, says Citizens First president Harry Kalaba.
Kalaba said President Hakainde Hichilema seemed to be consulting wrong people over challenges the country is grappling with.
“On Friday, they had that meeting ECCEP …business consultative …they were trying to think through the challenges that Zambia is going through. Have you seen the people who are there (invitation list), abasungu (whites). You can be surprised. Now those people that the President has brought close to advise him as captain of industry, they don’t even know the cost of mealie meal. They don’t even eat Nshima, those people he was talking to,” Kalaba said when he featured on Muvi TV’s Assignment programme on Sunday. “Clearly, it tells you the President is out of touch. He is getting people who don’t eat mealie meal and telling them ‘how do we sort this out?’ I don’t think Mark ‘O’ Donnell eats roller meal. I don’t think Imran Patel eats mealie meal. Those were some of the people in the meeting to sort out the challenges we are grappling with. When we tell you this President is out of touch, it is things like that. And when you look at the conversations they were having in that meeting, things he should have been discussing with his Cabinet or line ministries, that is what he is discussing with those people. When we tell you that this man does not know whether he is coming or going. His government does not know whether he is coming or going.”
And responding to a caller who urged him to seek audience and advise the President instead of doing so in the media, Kalaba said what he was doing was not church work but politics.
“There is no way we will be talking in secrecy. I have refused. There is no speaking in secrecy. Who will be speaking things here? When he was telling us those lies did he tell us quietly? He announced publicly right,” he said. “So when you announce publicly your lies, we will diffuse them also publicly that this what you said is not true. So my brother there in Ndola forgive me, it is not going to work. We want to make sure the Zambian people know.”
Kalaba said that he believed he was very decent in his criticism.
“Which day did you ever see the President saying I will call Edgar Lungu instead of going to the public so we can sit him down? What we are doing is not church. These are politics. If you want me to be advising President Hakainde Hichilema then let us all just join UPND and forget,” he said.
“Even him, the President, I told him ‘there is no way I can just call you and we just talk the two of us and it ends there. Running a government is not between you and I’. It involves so many stakeholders. The stakeholders must know which side Citizens First is standing. When we tell him he is travelling, is there anything secretive there? When we tell him you love abasungu, you love foreigners more than Zambians, it is true.”
Kalaba said like late Frederick Chiluba, President Hichilema should have been open with Zambians.
“Remember in 1990, president Chiluba when he was campaigning kept saying ‘are you ready to tighten your belts? Are you ready to sacrifice? Are you ready to die a little’ and the Zambians said yes. That is why they never held him accountable when the Structural Adjustment Programme kicked in because he had already told us about it. He (President Hichilema) told us that the price of mealie meal will come to K50. He told us that the bag of fertiliser will come from K600 to K250. He also told us the farmers will be getting eight bags [of fertiliser], four urea and four D-compound. He told us ministers would not drive VX vehicles. He told us himself that he would not be travelling. He told us himself that the youths are going to have jobs. He told us all those promises and that the kwacha was going to get stronger than the dollar and other currencies,” he recalled. “The kwacha has not heard his language. What language was he talking about? He had a formula on fuel. Never in the history of this country have I seen a taka taka (disorganised) arrangement in fuel procurement like we have. This is taka taka plus plus where every month ERB (Energy Regulation Board) is telling you the price of fuel that doesn’t sit well with our economy.”
Kalaba said Zambians did need to write to the energy ministry for it to know the challenges citizens are going through.
“All [energy minister Peter] Mr Kapala has to do is to live within the community to know the method he is using is not the right method. Isn’t it true Mr Kapala that if you buy a carbon cracker, a component which is missing at Indeni, we can keep our fuel in Indeni for at least six months? If I was President, I would revitalise Indeni and making another reservoir in Kapiri Mposhi. The population has grown. Zambia needs to have reserve stocks at least for one year. Now the acting energy minister (Collins) Mr Nzovu was telling us Zambia has got fuel for two weeks. Those are jokes,” he said.
Kalaba said feeding TAZAMA pipeline finished products was not plausible as there was not enough security to guard the stock.
“We don’t have enough police to man that thing,” he said. “Now government is telling us we are importing power and we are also exporting. Does it make sense? Somebody is making business in all this. Somebody is eating big. There is corruption of huge proportion happening. We have businessmen in this country. We don’t have leaders. These are businessmen and they are looking at things from a business perspective. Why did government begin exporting power to Namibia? And you saw the contract it said ‘even if we don’t have electricity, we are not going to disrupt the 80 megawatts we are giving you for five years’.”
Kalaba also called for the re-introduction of IS 55 which mandated mining firms to bank their profits before externalisation.There is no way