By Elijah Temboh
UNLESS HH DOES SOME MAGIC WITHIN 19 DAYS HE WON’T OUST PF FROM POWER WITH HIS RHETORICS
I have at many times laughed at those who are fond of saying that the PF should stop talking about HH and start telling people of Zambia what they will do for them. But to me I think it’s HH and the UPND who have a huge task to explain to the people of Zambia what they will do for them.
The PF have continued doing wonders and people in the villages and towns are able to see and they appreciate it. PF has little to promise apart from the message of continuity and fixing what the opposition points at like Kwacha and prices of commodities which ECL has already started working on. Now Mr HH has 18 days to win my heart with a good drafted plan not Bally will fix it. President Lungu is very swift to also touch what Mr HH thinks to be his talking points. Look at the dollar.
Mr HH and the UPND have on several occasions been aided by natural disasters which would have made it easier for them to win elections but because they lack a strategic team to draft a killer message for them, they keep losing. In 2015-16 elections, we had terrible loadshedding due to droughts we experienced and he failed to capitalize on that. In 2021 we have the pandemic that has ravaged the economy but still he has no killer instincts messages like more money in your pockets and lower taxes. His talks about the high cost of living but he fails to give us an attainable plan outlining what and how he will bring the cost of living down. For example how he will reduce the Kwacha.
With Facebook bloggers which consists mainly of people without voters card cheering him, he thinks he has already won an election as it has been the case always. He forgets that my grandmother and mother needs a message of social security not employment. He forgets that PF has taken schools, hospitals, Clinics, roads, social cash transfer, reduced school fees, brought clean water, buried loadshedding, reduced the price of mealie-meal, increased the crop market price, all these are things that don’t only appeal to people in urban areas but also in rural parts. For him apart from Bally will fix it which is a message for few selected sections of society, he doesn’t have anything.
The PF acknowledges the fact that the cost of living and youth unemployment has gone high. No wonder you can see the swiftness by ECL to act on prices for cooking oil and mealie-meal now it’s the Kwacha they are sorting out. Hon GBM, CK, Raphael Nakachinda, Dr Canisius Banda and mama Edith Nawakwi have been brought on board to help pass a word of recommendation to a married woman who wants to leave her matrimonial home for a sweet talker who literally has no good intentions for her. These people have been strategically brought in to lay bare HH so that the woman doesn’t make a deadly mistake of dumping her husband in this case PF. That’s politics.
PF is a political party that has heavily invested in human resource. This is what helped them win 2011 polls. And the same team that won elections is the team the chipantepante UPND is sizing up against today. It’s not possible to defeat it. With the high cost of living, PF has invested heavily in road infrastructure, they have built schools, they have built universities, reduced school fees, invested in chiefs, farmers, the vulnerable, the aged, the youths, civil servants, they have invested in advertisements etc.
The cost of living is high but the levels of development is unprecedented under the PF. This is the opposite with the RB led MMD which bowed out of power in 2011 to the might PF. In as much as the Kwacha was at K5 and mealie-meal at K45, we didn’t have good roads, we didn’t have enough schools, we didn’t have many universities, School fees were high, we didn’t have access to clean water, we didn’t have youth empowerment schemes, we didn’t have the Kazungula bridge, we didn’t have the flyover bridges, we didn’t have the Kafue Hydro Power Station, there was no early distribution of farmer inputs. The list is endless and on top of all these, the government was marred with corruption. But today in spite of having the high cost of living, the PF has what to point at unlike the MMD that relied on dishing out cash only.
Mr Sata and PF organized a strategic team that drafted a plan and they begun to tell the people how corrupt MMD government was. They told the people in a clear tone how they will alleviate poverty and create employment opportunities for the youths through a 90 days plan. This is what HH and the UPND are lacking. They should sing the song of the high cost of living the loudest while outlining attainable plans on how they will fix it.
Winning an election entails outlining clear goals that speak to my grandmother in the village who is not looking for employment but social security and a youthful me in town who is looking for employment. However, Bally’s campaign rhetorics are selective. They only appeal to a certain class of people. Until he drafts a message that speaks to all senior chiefs not to Mukuni only, to all farmers, to all the business community, to all youths, to all the vulnerable in society, to the old etc he won’t oust PF from power.
No matter what you think or say, HH has a long way to go to win this election. He says people have already decided to change but its not so on the ground. He lacks a strategy. He wants to win through sympathy. No wonder he is a cry baby in most instances. He should ask Mr Sata if he thinks he has been victimized alot. Mr Sata will tell him that he is in fact the most tolerated opposition leader in Zambia by ECL.
With only 19 days to go, Bally can’t beat a team that changed government in 2011. FTJ would have told you that until his team which defeated UNIP in 1991 was completely wiped out of MMD, that’s when PF defeated MMD. And this will be the case with PF. Until this crop of ulusato is out , that’s when you can dream of defeating PF.
Thankyou.