PF energy policy more attractive than UPND’s – expert

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 09:40:34 +0000

By Sandra Machima

THE Patriotic Front’s promise to reform the energy sector with the possibility of discovering oil and gas over the next five years will give President Edgar Lungu and the PF the advantage to win the 2021 elections, energy expert Johnstone Chikwanda has predicted.

Mr Chikwanda said as the world moves towards 2030, the issue of energy was becoming an explosive campaign issue because all the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) dealing with social justice, poverty alleviation, environment, gender and governance issues, among others, had now teamed up after realizing that until the ‘‘energy trilemma’’ was resolved, they would not achieve much in their respective focal areas.

He said the Zambian energy sector had a turnover of more than $2 billion per year and therefore it could not be trivialized. Mr Chikwanda charged that the opposition United Party for National Development’s Hakainde Hichilema and his running mate Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba had failed ‘‘to grasp and articulate’’ the components of the Zambian energy sector and thus were far less convincing that they could take the sector to another level when compared with President Lungu’s articulation of the issue during the just ended 2016 elections.

Mr Chikwanda said upon analysis of the energy policies of leading political parties which participated in the 2016 general elections, most parties still had significant work to do with regard to putting up an attractive energy policy strategy.

He said the opposition UPND manifesto had not offered Zambians a convincing answer that would have benefitted them, if they were to be given a chance to be in public office.

Mr Chikwanda was convinced that should the PF manage to successfully reform the energy sector as they wanted to, roll out solar panel installations across the country and discovered oil and gas over the next five years, President Lungu and the PF would be unstoppable in 2021 elections.

“But when you look at one of the 10 points which related to energy, the UPND did not bring out any unique and distinguished selling features, because it is not enough to just say ‘we will bring investors and end load shedding’.

He said the opposition UPND did not have even figures on how much Zambia was losing because of load shedding.