Sat, 11 Mar 2017 14:55:45 +0000
IT IS highly hypocritical of Hakainde Hichilema to blame President Edgar Lungu for the tragedy that claimed eight lives at the OYDC when he is supposed to be showing empathy to families of deceased, Ephraim Shakafuswa has charged.
And Mr. Shakafuswa has chided opposition political parties instructing their members to stay away from national events.
Commenting on Mr. Hichilema’s remarks that the stampede at OYDC showed the levels of poverty in Zambia, Mr. Shakafuswa said it was wrong for the UPND to mock the dead as the development had nothing to do with poverty because the primary reason people went there was to worship.
He charged that it was wrong for Mr. Hichilema to use any given opportunity to attack his political opponents without recourse to the fact that his actions had a telling effect on those affected, adding that rather than insulting the dead, it was important for Mr. Hichilema to console those who had lost their relatives.
He said associating the tragedy to failure by Government to provide for its citizenry was failure to think objectively and an insult on Zambians because the situation in the country was not as desperate as the opposition leader put it.
“Zambia is a Christian nation and the primary reason why people went to OYDC was to worship and not that they were following food. That does not show poverty in any way and it is wrong for Mr. Hichilema to mock the dead and their relatives that they are hungry people.
“We expected Mr. Hichilema to empathise with the situation because that is what true leaders do but for him, he is using the tragedy to make cheap political mileage as if it was President Lungu who caused it when, in fact, not. I think there is need to bring sanity in the way we do politics because this does not befit someone contending for national leadership,” Mr. Shakafuswa said.
“We found these public holidays and we will leave them. They were not engineered by any politician but by Zambians and so, it is political immaturity to associate them with politics when they have nothing to do with that. If they are refusing their members from attending, what will they be telling the opposition if they formed government?” he asked.
