UPND don’t think things through, notes Kateka
By Fanny Kalonda
NEW Heritage party president Chishala Kateka has called on the new dawn administration to think through issues before they are implemented.
And Kateka is saddened that people are openly calling President Hichilema a liar which she says means the people on the ground are losing confidence in the word of their leader.
She noted a lack of transparency in the new dawn administration as they only come clean on issues when pushed into a corner.
“I am really saddened by the fact that we now have people openly calling the President a liar. And when we do that, when we have a president that is labelled a liar, it means that the people on the ground are losing confidence in the word of the leader,” she said. “It is like a father in a home lyonsefye (every time) he lies and he never does what he says and when you have a situation where the all nation stops believing what you say, then we have an issue. When we have a nation, I saw the President saying ‘oh our border with Angola is 1,500 kilometres long’ and I am thinking, why did someone not check those figures for him so that he gives the correct information? His support team are supposed to feed him that information. So obviously, somebody is going to jump on that and say you see the President always tells an untruth.”
Kateka said she was not impressed with the performance of the new dawn administration so far as there seems to be no direction of where they are going.
“When he says something, the President must make sure that he sees the things through in order to give the Zambian people confidence that we are being led by a person of his word, a man of his word,” she advised. “I am sure a lot of people will be alert to what I am saying because we expected that when these people go in we are going to see, but we are not seeing this well thought out plan. As a matter of fact, you can go on the street ask someone, where do you think we are going as a nation and they will say, ‘awe katwishi (we don’t know)’. You don’t get that sense that these people are taking us from point A to point whatever. You are just confused because what we expected and what we are seeing are two different things. And I think that is what has confused a lot of us. I suppose because they raised our expectations so much in almost everything. Our expectations were so high. We as the New Heritage Party, we have not been impressed. Let’s think through, so the idea may be good but you need to think through how you execute some of these things. My biggest criticism of the UPND, is that they do want to succeed but they don’t think things through so that they are able to implement the things in a manner that will work just because they first of all want to do away with everything that was done by the previous governments so that we can say that oh yeah, you see?”
Speaking when she featured on the Millennium TV’s Pulse Nation on Thursday, Kateka noted that there is a mismatch between economic indicators and the situation on the ground.
“The average Zambian person, what is important for me, is can I put food on the table. Am I paying less for my roller meal than before? So those are things that matter to the Zambian on the street,” she said. “The best people to tell you whether prices have stabilised are down there. I am surprised at the speed at which mealie meal has gone up from whatever it was to K210 in a short time. That is not stability, it’s not stability. Stability means prices are around the same. But they have been rising. People are not happy with the prices, I can tell you that.”
Kateka said there is need for the new dawn administration to look at the bigger picture and not focus on competing with the PF.
“But we have got to think of the bigger picture. We need to think about the system. We need to think about the Zambian people. It is not a fight between you and the previous person who was sitting there. There is got to be continuity,” she said. “So I keep saying, it’s important to think through issues. You should know if you feel that working with these people will be detrimental to us, get rid of them. Just like there was a time, a short while ago when the President was saying, ‘no, my ministers’, why are you keeping them? Who is to blame, is it us the Zambian people? No, it is you the appointing authority. So when you talk about governance, you have got to bear in mind the fact that it is not just the policies that you put in place and the plans that you put in place that matter. It is the team of people that you have around you that matters. So you need to make sure that you put the right people in the right positions so that they can do the right things.”
Kateka said Zambians need to be told the truth.
“Tell Zambians the truth. Leadership is about preparing people so that when you tell them that guys we need to sacrifice and they say, how much. But where you begin to make promises and things like that, you are not preparing them. You are not leading them. The MMD were able to do wonders within a short period, six months… we are not saying things should be perfect but by now we should have seen the trajectory of where we are going,” she said. “If they fail, we are not going to be better off. There is scripture in Daniel which says ‘pray for the nation which I have sent you to for in its success, you will succeed, with its prosperity, you will have prosperity’. So their performance affects all of us. The reason why we become angry is where we see these people messing up because they are messing our lives. They are messing the lives of Zambians. That is why we get upset. We are not like them because they used to point and say ‘no they have failed’. If they fail, all of us are going to suffer. It is our prayer and hope that they succeed and get things right.”
Kateka noted that UPND leaders are deflecting the problems that the country is going through.
“You need to own the problems and resolve the problems. If you can’t accept the responsibility, then you should have not taken that responsibility. The reason we put you there was because of these problems and those you inherited. It is not inspiring confidence in the Zambian people,” said Kateka.