THE Patriotic Front (PF) has admitted that it is broke and unable to pay its debtors.
Contrary to public perception, according to its acting President, Mr Given Lubinda, the party had no sacks of hidden money to pay for liabilities mainly legal fees arising from post-election litigation in which the UPND has petitioned all the seats it lost.
Mr Lubinda said the reason PF was broke was because of the high number of court cases that had been brought about by the UPND petitioning elections in a bid to suck the little resources the party had.
Recently, the High Court entered a consent judgement in which the party was ordered to pay K8.8 million as legal fees to four law firms.
Mr Lubinda admitted that the party was indebted but that the reason was because the UPND had deliberately gone to court making the PF to incur huge amounts in legal fees.
“The petitions made us accrue a huge debt as they crippled us financially because we spent huge amounts on legal fees when our counterparts did not even have legal representation,” he said.
He said that indeed the party was debt choked but that the UPND was the mastermind as they orchestrated the whole thing to finish off the PF.
Mr Lubinda said for the first time council elections were cancelled and it has never happened in the country’s election history.
He said it was strange that the party they claimed was full of thieves was actually broke and did not have the money to even pay legal fees.
He said it is ironical that the people that they accused to be rich due to corruption were also very broke and were in need of money.
Mr Lubinda said that they had also accrued debt from suppliers who assisted the party during the campaign periods.
“We had over 200 petitions at council level alone and that is why UPND brought out those huge petitions because that was their agenda,” he said.
Mr Lubinda said he was going to meet the members of the central committee to discuss the way forward on how the party would raise these funds to pay back.
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