Time for stories is over, Mundubile warns UPND
By Fanny Kalonda
PF presidential hopeful Brian Mundubile has challenged government to reveal the number of deaths that have occurred across the country as a result of shortage of essential medicines.
The Mporokoso PF member of parliament says many people cannot afford medicines especially those in rural areas.
Featured on a special program on Muvi TV on Wednesday, Mundubile said time for stories was over as people are now able to compare situations.
“Now the time for stories is over. Zambian people are able to compare. They will compare oranges with oranges and not oranges to apples. You have to be careful with the UPND, with what they say,” he said.
“We have been talking about shortage of drugs, essential drugs for quite sometime now. It is very unfortunate that many people are not even thinking about, nobody has come forward to inform the Zambian people how many deaths have come as a result of this unfortunate incident of shortage of drugs. People seem to be focused on the shortage of drugs but the issues that have resulted in this shortage of drugs, that information is not being talked about. I know that a number of people, a number of families, right now are grieving after losing their beloved ones.”
Mundubile said lives that should have not ordinarily been lost “are being lost today”.
“That is the kind of situation that we are facing today. So let’s not trivialise this because it borders on lives and everything that is going on is that which affects the poor people. There are no drugs in the hospitals,” he said. Mundubile said those with disposable income, “they will walk to a pharmacy and get their drugs”.
“What about the poor people, villagers? They are dying without anyone to speak for them,” he said.
Mundubile said the UPND had lost popularity going by the by-elections results that the party scored out of the total number of votes.
“The moment a ruling party resorts to violence, it’s a constructive admission that they are losing power. That’s a constructive admission that they are losing popularity because they have got the state machinery and everything on their side but they even go further and begin to brutalise people at the police station in full view of the police, that is the first sign that the party is at its weakest,” he said.
“For the very first time in the history of our country a party loses its popularity to the extent that the UPND has done, in the first one year, it’s the first time. There is no political party in this country that has lost popularity at the extent at which the UPND has done. So when you hear praises of what they have done or remaining in power, there is no ordinary citizen or ordinary Zambian that has ever said that. An ordinary citizen is saying bafwile baya (they should go). But the leaders themselves in the UPND are saying we are here for 50 years! The fact remains, UPND has lost popularity. That fact cannot be modified. It remains as such. We had two elections in Kwacha and Kabushi where there was no competition. You are given a penalty and they remove a goal keeper and doesn’t score. We were not in Kwacha, we were not in Kabushi. The President was on the Copperbelt for five days, 45,000 registered voters and they get 6,000. That is the reality on the ground. If the UPND are going to come to you and talk about their popularity, just refer them to Kwacha and Kabushi where they were the only players and they just failed to score. That’s the reality. There was no one to score in Kwacha, there was no one to brutalise in Kabushi, there was no one to injure.”
Mundubile said there was no political will to end violence.
“We have a lot of caderism in the UPND whilst it’s also true that we had caderism in the PF. Caderism in the PF was predominantly in bus stations and markets, under the UPND it is actually in institutions, government institutions. Cadres have been employed. There is no professionalism, people can’t work freely. They are allowing all this violence because the people that should have controlled that violence are cadres themselves occupying state institutions,” he charged.
“…the cadres are communicating something. They may be doing this in frustration. It’s actually protest against the party leadership so that they expose the party top leadership for what they are not doing. Inasmuch as they endeavour to correct the violence in the party, can they get down and see how they can best provide some form of empowerment to these youths that fought and stood with them through and through because clearly they have got expectations.”
Mundubile said UPND supporters could be frustrated by getting nothing out of the elections.
He said it is possible for UPND to empower members legally without any acts of corruption.
And Mundubile said not every hard working Zambian is a thief as others have built businesses from nowhere.
“There is nothing unusual about someone working very hard and have assets over K200 million. It’s possible, it can be done. Not everybody can be a thief. Not every hardworking Zambian is a thief. There are genuine businessmen here in Zambia. Built businesses from nowhere, through hard work. If you are going to be excited with the figure of K200,000, certainly the figure of K50 million should be very exciting to you,” said Mundubile.
“The signal for 2026 will come on the 30th of March, 2023. The leader that will be elected from the PF convention must give hope not only to the PF members but to the entire nation.”