UPND IS GONE IF 2026 POLLS ARE FAIR – MULUSA

UPND IS GONE IF 2026 POLLS ARE FAIR – MULUSA

FORMER Minister of National Planning and Development Lucky Mulusa says if the Electoral Commission of Zambia conducts free and fair elections next year, the UPND will be voted out of power.

And Mulusa says most Zambians fail to identify their Cabinet ministers because they do not interact with people.

Meanwhile, Mulusa says Zambians are crying because President Hakainde Hichilema has not lived up to their expectations.

Speaking when he featured on Hot FM, Monday, Mulusa said there was more aggressiveness in defending government policy under Levy Mwanawasa’s administration compared to the UPND government.

“I want to believe if the election is going to be carried out fairly, no violence, a fair Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), a conducive environment for everybody to wake up and vote, votes being observed without observers being chased from their polling stations, I want to believe that this government is gone”.

“This government is gone. When you look at the entire [team], it’s been whipped into submissive silence. Ministers hardly defend government policies. Only the President [does so] from time to time. You don’t see the level of activism from the Cabinet as we used to see under Levy Patrick Mwanawasa. I can assure you it’s the correct picture. I am yet to start seeing ministers defending this budget. Maybe they’re going to undertake road shows and one or two ministers might be on the trail. But it’s quite a low-level defence of the government policies in this Cabinet. There’s a lot of silence,” he said.

“There was more militancy in the Mwanawasa administration. The militancy was quite high compared to this one. The current Cabinet is quieter than previous Cabinets. Even Minister Musokotwane himself is quiet. He’s never come out to defend the tax policy on mines which was pronounced by the President and not himself. Cabinet is like a milling plant. There are processes for you to come up with a particular decision”.

“If you were to ask even somebody who doesn’t read newspapers or listen to radio that much and ask them who was in the RB administration, they’ll tell you there was Tetamashimba, Mike Mulongoti, Dora Siliya, Felix Mutati, and these people were very militant. During your show, the StanChart Quiz, from time to time you ask who the minister of a particular ministry is; people always fail to identify their ministers because they aren’t visible”.

Mulusa said people don’t even bother to listen to Presidential addresses because there had been reduced interaction with the grassroots.

“The President is working alone like one entity. So, Ministers need to interact with people and explain these things. Both the President’s opening of Parliament and the budget presentation, most people I share ideas with were never bothered. They never even listened to it or read it. They simply don’t care because there’s reduced interaction with the people and reduced activities for people to buy into what government is doing. He’s actually misplaced achievement against pronouncements,” he said.

“He usually evaluates his performance on his own, so I don’t need to do that. He’s very methodical; he uses graphs. So all we need to do is plot those graphs against the promises that he made when he was campaigning to become President. He said the Kwacha would perform in this manner, let’s plot the graphs and see if the Kwacha has performed as expected”.

“He spoke about the exchange rate, the fight against corruption, and governance, starting from the President up to the last person who is expected to declare their assets. We [need to] see if he is ever to declare his assets. The manner in which he believes himself and what he is doing, I don’t wish to create a shock for him if I were to give him a grade. Zambians are out there complaining, crying, so that shows he has not lived up to their expectations”.

Mulusa added that there was a need to see the economic benefits trickle down to citizens.

“We need to make sure that there’s a trickle-down effect to the people. Dr Musokotwane was talking about economic development; are we achieving economic development? People must participate in the enjoyment and benefits that come with economic growth. That’s not being achieved. Three or four percent economic growth, what is it translating into on the trickle-down effects on people? We were promised jobs, now the jobs we see are actually very embarrassing”.

“Our youths and women are being whipped into streets to clean streets in order to eat and being called Cash for Work. That’s embarrassing because you’re actually growing a cadre of poor citizens. They don’t pay NAPSA, they don’t contribute to their future savings through whatever they earn. Whatever money they earn, more often than not, is delayed,” said Mulusa.

“With CDF, it’s grown to K40 million per constituency, but I am yet to hear of any constituency that has actually received anything above K20 million. Most of them you’ll find that four years down the line, this is when they’re receiving up to K2 million.

It makes our budget an exercise in compliance, but we don’t mean it. Most of the things contained in there are basically meaningless. CDF is a game changer in terms of just making those political pronouncements. It’s not there on the ground. It’s still a campaign tool, and a lot needs to be done.

We need to create capacity at the constituency level for locals to deliver on those CDF funds and make sure wastage is eliminated and discrimination in the participation of undertaking CDF projects is also eliminated. We’re One Zambia, One Nation, and we shouldn’t be defined by political affiliation”.

News Diggers