UPND AllIANCE HAS PUT IN PLACE MEASURES TO PROTECT THE ALLIANCE VOTE – KBF
And Fube has condemned the burning of UPND Alliance president Hakainde Hichilema’s campaign billboard, and has further called for the arrest of the perpetrators.
In an interview, Fube said the alliance was confident of winning the general elections and was putting systems in place to ensure an equal playing field and the protection of votes.
“The alliance is very confident because we know that some of the things that happen in an election won’t happen now. We have put systems in place and we are still modifying and pulling up our systems. We will know how to protect the vote. We are going to go into full time education of the polling agents. But more than that, we will also have to ensure that the people in charge of the elections get to understand that they must begin to enforce the electoral rules to a point where even the ruling party must feel if they misbehave, they can be disqualified.
We cannot have elections which are lopsided and one-sided, no! There must be an equal playing field so that at the end of the day everybody feels that, if they have lost, they have lost on merit. Not because you have skewed the attention or certain systems to suit yourself. We are aware of certain things which the PF have put in place, we are doing counter measures now. I can’t go into details but we are moving,” Fube said.
“We want to inspect every polling station and we ensure that we will have polling agents on that polling station. We have to make sure that our people are on the ground to protect the vote from the polling stations. We will also have to ensure that our lawyers, our legal team will be full throttle on the go, if they have to go and get injunctions, if they [have to] go and stop certain acts which we know have been planned.”
Fube charged that the original PF was dead because the people who had joined the party had destroyed and diluted it.
“The problem we have with PF, generally in terms of planning, they think it is about money, it is about corrupting the electorate, it is about music and dancing, they have no message. Again, for some of us that was the departure point, because we kept telling them we cannot go on this trajectory. They didn’t want to listen, they think we are frustrated, we are angry, it is not about that, it is principle. If you disagree with somebody, disagree on principle, disagree on ideas. Don’t agree on personality.
I am not interested in personality myself, I am interested in the level of thinking, what are you bringing on the table? What value are you bringing to the table? I don’t see much value in PF right now. The original PF, I am sorry to say, it is dead! The people that have come in PF have destroyed and diluted PF. The problem is that people who are blinded by money and corruption think PF is the same, it is not the same. It is not the same PF!” exclaimed Fube.
Fube also condemned the burning of Hichilema’s campaign billboard, stating that government should show leadership by ensuring that the culprits were caught and brought to book.
“Let me begin by saying that I condemn the act of burning the poster of the UPND party president. Second of all, I want to make it very clear that lawlessness has become part of the DNA of the PF. For some of us it has become the departure point. It is not correct that when your party is in government, you promote lawlessness to a level where citizens must live in fear. It is a very dangerous development where cadres begin to think they are above the law.
We cannot as citizens sit idly by and watch these developments grow from one inch to the next inch. The next thing, they will be coming to your home and demand rent when they do not own the house. We have seen this kind of behavior when they entered the civil service and wanted to get the civil servant out of her working environment. That is lawlessness!” he lamented.
“We have seen when they put their chitenge on the dashboard of their car and the police cannot stop them. That becomes their passport to pass any road block whether their car is road worthy or not. So, this act of burning the poster is unfortunate. This is where we must see leadership on the part of whoever is in government to ensure that the culprits are caught and brought to book. Examples must be set so that it is a deterrent.
The problem we have is that most of the cadres know that they are backed by people in authority, in government and in party structures. So, they misbehave at will. This for some of us is a departure point because you cannot rule a country when you are a bad example.”
And Fube called on the police to act professionally by arresting the perpetrators.
“I am not sure whether it is the PF who burnt [Hichilema’s billboard], whatever it is, the government must take its position. It is not good enough on the part of the police, we are tired of the police telling us ‘we are investigating, we are investigating’, how many things have they investigated? How many things have they concluded? The problem we have is that professional policing is also dying.
There are some very good police officers in the police force but they are being discouraged because of lack of leadership in the police force, and because of lack of being encouraged to do their jobs. Some of them when they do their job professionally, the first thing is a phone call from a Minister of Home Affairs or some SG and start saying ‘what are doing, that is our boy’, you can’t do that,” he said.
“So, it is very unfortunate and I condemn it. I mean why have all these cameras been put up around the streets? They haven’t seen who did this? Because one of the reasons they have told us that they are putting [up] all these cameras in the streets is to be watching the streets. It is not just about road accidents; it is to observe the behaviour of people in the communities. Now surely those cameras haven’t picked up anything, then they are fake cameras. They are just like those cameras that they gave us for road traffic and then they ended up paying fines which we did not understand.”
Meanwhile, Fube said the country needed fresh leadership to restore the rule of law.
“For me, the whole nation requires fresh leadership, this is failure of leadership. We cannot be singing that ‘there will be no violence’, we are seeing it happening even before we get into full swing elections. I condemn it and I don’t want to go beyond condemnation except to say that I am very disappointed with whoever has done this. If they are being sent by their leaders, they should think twice because at the end of the day 12th of August is coming.
We are going to campaign, what happens if there is a change of government? Because the people that you are harassing today will turn against you. We don’t want people to be taking the law into their own hands, there are systems in this government and we must reinforce those systems. I mean it is rather sad. It is very disappointing!” said Fube.