By OLIVER SAMBOKO
UPND president Hakainde Hichilema is an inherently selfish person who is using the smaller political parties in the alliance as a springboard to ascend to power, Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP) leader Sean Tembo has said.
Mr Tembo said talk about opposition unity ahead of next year’s election without first defining what it really is was a problem in itself.
“There does not appear to be any consensus among political players on a common definition of opposition unity. Each one has their own, and the definition varies from one end of the spectrum to the other,” he said.
He said some bigger parties like the UPND consider opposition unity means total submission of all smaller political to them for the common purpose of kicking out the ruling party from power.
He said political leaders like Mr Hichilema and NDC leader Chishimba Kambwili believe that in an opposition alliance smaller parties should always be submissive to the main party.
Mr Tembo said he cannot work with Mr Hichilema because the man is a selfish person.
“HH is inherently a selfish person. For example, when we were in an alliance with him, his party enjoyed our full unconditional support, but were unwilling to sacrifice even a single constituency or ward in return, for our party to field candidates under the alliance umbrella. In other words, they want you to use your resources to escort them to State House, with no benefit accruing to yourselves whatsoever,” he said.
He said Mr Hichilema has problems building sustainable relationships with other political stakeholders because of his habit of using people for his own benefit.
“The second reason why we cannot work together with UPND again is that they do not have any vision for this country. In fact, if UPND had a viable plan to turnaround this country for the better, l would not, in the first place, have found it necessary to form the Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP).
‘Hakainde Hichilema is selfish’
