UPND has good policies but should have been differently packaged – Mwanawasa
Fanny Kalonda
FORMER Central Province deputy permanent secretary Patrick Mwanawasa says the UPND have got good policies, but should have been packaged differently during campaigns.
“But the fact of the matter is that giving campaign promises and what you find [in government] is something totally different. Maybe they could have packaged their message to the people differently,” he said.
Mwanawasa said it would take time for economic fundamentals to trickle down.
“It will take time for these fundamentals to trickle down to the people of Zambia who have been down this route before. In 1974 when we had the first IMF programme under Dr Kaunda, we were told to implement a programme under the IMF. That programme was not successfully implemented and we had challenges…” he said when he featured on Diamond Live on Wednesday. “So, to really ask us what is our view as to whether the UPND government actually has the people’s best interest regarding the people’s standard of living is rather premature at this stage in time because we would expect that maybe the people of Zambia would respond to the policies or would respond the promises which the UPND government were elected into office in 2021.”
He said the UPND has good policies.
“I think the UPND government did not appreciate what they were going to find when they formed government. The UPND have got good policies, that I will not deny. But the fact of the matter is that giving campaign promises and what you find is something totally different. Maybe they could have packaged their message to the people differently. And the way FTJ and MMD packaged their campaign promises whereby people of Zambia ‘are you ready to sacrifice’ because we are going to go into government and when we go into government we have to make your lives better but you have to sacrifice.
Maybe they (UPND) could have gone that route,” Mwanawasa said. “But it is a matter of packaging your campaign promises. The packaging of the campaign promises could have been bad, but the truth of the matter is that this country finds itself in a very precarious situation. It finds itself in a condition whereby it will not take a year, it will not take two years, it will not take three years, maybe four years for it to at least get to a trajectory which the people of Zambia aspire for it to be.
This (IMF package) can be the panacea to the economic challenges if the new dawn administration sticks to the policy arrangements of what the IMF has given us. I’ll go back to what I mentioned about the first programme in 1976, it was badly implemented because there was no effort at all from the UNIP government. And we didn’t do well and from there again there were problems…”
Mwanawasa said he has noted political will from President Hakainde Hichilema to fight corruption.
He said the corruption fight has always been an audit against previous administrations in all the successive governments and not a witch hunt.
“He puts political will towards the fight. Yes we have seen a bit of political will from the President and the new dawn administration but a lot more can be done. It has always been fight against or should I say an audit against previous administrations. It is not a witch hunt at all, but it is always about the fight against the happenings which happened in the previous governments,” said Mwanawasa. “From Dr Chiluba’s time against UNIP, from [president Levy] Mwanawasa’s time against Chiluba’s administration, from Michael Sata’s time against Rupiah Banda and Levy Mwanawasa’s tenure. There has always been that thing that when you fight against what happened in the past it is a bad culture because it goes against the tenets of humanism, which is espoused and again on the other hand it is relevant because we need to at least make our leaders accountable for the happenings, for the things which they did whilst they were still in power. Those who are against the fight against corruption will say it is not a good policy to undertake but I do believe that it is actually necessary because we need to hold our leaders accountable because the issue of national development actually comes to be compromised by people who tend to be corrupt. Because when you become corrupt, the people who suffer are the masses. What is important is the political will from the Head of State to ensure that this scourge is at least managed or fought with the vigour which one represents of their administration.”