There’ll never be true change of government – Nakacinda
By Walusungu Lundu in Chongola
WHILE some sections of society share a view that PF is dead and buried, the party national information and publicity chairman Raphael Nakacinda continues expressing optimism that there is a chance of bouncing back into government.
He acknowledged that there must be some things that the party did wrong prior to the 2021 elections that resulted to their loss.
“One of the greatest sources of wisdom is experience. Many people that are effective in any discipline is people who may have failed before. If you talk of sportsmen, they’ll tell you that some of the greatest strikers are those who may have failed sometimes in the past,” he said when he featured on Kokoliko Radio in Chingola on Saturday. “We may have one or two mix ups when we were in government but I can tell you we knew what we were doing but possibly omitted one or two things. And those omissions we only came to fully appreciate them when we were out of government. Given an opportunity to get back into government I can tell you, we can perform better.”
Nakacinda said Zambia would never develop and mature if all that is inculcated in citizens is opportunism.
“If UNIP managed to reorganise, maybe they would have bounced back into power after MMD. There was going to be a clear distinction of ideologies in terms of UNIP in contrast to MMD. But what happened is that because UNIP was mismanaged, all those that were in UNIP joined the MMD. The moment they saw signs that MMD was heading a bad direction, most of those in MMD we joined PF,” he said. “What we are advocating for, there will never be true change of government. Many of those in UPND they are from UNIP, MMD and some PF people. So what change is there? But those of us who have remained resilient in Patriotic Front, by God’s grace and the support of Zambians, if we succeed to reorganise ourselves and form government, the UPND will also learn something that our friends didn’t despair when they lost. They reorganised themselves. Moving forward, people will not be joining political parties because its greener. They will be joining political parties because they believe in the ideologies of that political party.”
Nakacinda said PF would never have to guess on how to lead Zambians if voted back into power.
He accused President Hakainde Hichilema of running government like his private company.
“Today, there is no clear change. You were complaining about cadres in PF, those cadres most of them, like the UPND suggest, they have very violent cadres…the violence now is more devastating in the UPND. PF, we should be encouraged to reorganise ourselves, resharpen our policies, ideologies, manifesto. We can never start guessing. What’s been a challenge to President Hakainde Hichilema is he has never really been in government. All his life he has just been practicing business and so on. So when he became President he has been running government like it is his private company,” he said.
Nakacinda advised the President to listen to his advisers.
“First advice I can give is that Zambia is not a farm. It’s not a business. Two, those that you appointed as advisers, if you really believe in them as competent advisers, listen to them. Not a situation where you are the one advising your advisers. That’s how come you’re making mistakes every other day. We had a cabinet where when former president Edgar Lungu comes, it was only opening remarks. Then he says Hon [Alexander] Chiteme can you do your presentation. We would all agree on one point,” said Nakacinda. “There was nothing like you’re out of the cabinet then you say something contrary to what was agreed upon. Not this government where the President says there’s is load shedding because Kariba Dam is leaking. CEO comes and says something else! The contradictory statements from this government shows that they have failed. There is no Shoprite for PF or for UPND. We all go to the same market. So when prices of mealie meal escalate, we all feel the effects. So we should not start mocking each other.”