Sean Tembo, the PeP president, writes:
ABOUT TRIVIALITY AND PETTINESS
1. Good morning fellow citizens. We have a big problem in this country. We have a President who is extremely petty and in order to please him, his Government officials have equally become very petty and trivial. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between Cabinet Office and the UPND Secretariat, as far as their behavior is concerned.
2. In the past two weeks, three key events have happened to prove the level of pettiness and triviality of Bally and his new dawn administration.
3. Firstly in Chipata at the N’cwala traditional ceremony, the Bally ordered the ejection of the PF acting President Given Lubinda from the VIP section so that he should go and sit in the crowd. Such treatment for a leader of the main opposition political party has never happened in the history of this country. Bally himself was always invited to events and treated as a VIP during his 15 years in opposition.
4. Secondly, Bally and his new dawn administration decided not to extend an invitation to NDC and its President Saboi Imboela for women’s day celebrations. Meanwhile government sent invitations to all the proxy political parties of UPND. This is despite the fact that NDC is one of the few women-led political parties in Zambia today, and it is Women’s Day that we were celebrating.
5. Thirdly, Bally and his new dawn administration decided not to invite any other political party to second youths to attend the Youth Indaba which started the day before yesterday. That makes the so-called Youth Indaba to be a UPND Indaba instead as all the youths attending it came from UPND structures.
6. Some people may not see anything wrong with the above three events, but there is a very dangerous pattern developing here. For a very long time, the State Functions Department at Cabinet Office operated independently until now after Bally became President. These days, Cabinet Office only sends invitations for national events to UPND Alliance partner political parties.
7. We have a President who is extremely petty and trivial and while such behavior is his personal preference, our worry is that when a President is too focused to settling petty scores with the opposition, he most likely will not have the time to address important national matters such as reducing the cost of living, creating a conducive business environment for SMEs to thrive, creating youth employment etcetera.
8. That perhaps explains why, apart from the IMF loan bailout application, Bally and his UPND do not have any economic turnaround plan for Zambia. Instead of focusing on matters that will uplift the welfare of the Zambian people, he is busy trying to fix those who are not his praise singers. A President who keeps so many grudges cannot possibly succeed in properly serving the nation. The President needs prayers so that the vengeance and bitterness which he accumulated over 15 years of opposition politics can be watered down and he can begin to focus on national building.
ENDS
SET 11.03.2022