Stop Nawakwi’s power greed, FDD members told Nawakwi third term bid slammed

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 13:45:10 +0000

By BENNIE MUNDANDO & OSCAR MALIPENGA

 FDD members should now rise up and stop Edith Nawakwi’s dictatorial tendencies in her quest to consolidate grip on power because she is becoming a danger to democracy, the Zambia Republican Party (ZRP) has charged.

ZRP president Wright Musoma told the Daily Nation yesterday that the FDD had become one of the most undemocratic parties in Zambia because of the bulldozing behaviour of Ms. Nawakwi who had held members hostage in her quest to remain president forever.

Mr. Musoma said Ms. Nawakwi will  stop at nothing in her ambition to purge out any opposing forces to her intention to become a perpetual leader within her party, adding that the expulsion of Chifumu Banda was the beginning of worse things to come if old members did not rise to the occasion to stop the rot.

He said the FDD’s decision to defer the convention which would have ushered in a new leadership was undemocratic and aimed at gagging people with leadership qualities from challenging Ms. Nawakwi for the party presidency.

He said it did not make any sense that while the founding president Christone Tembo was magnanimous enough to leave the presidency for Ms. Nawakwi after she mobilised a revolt to oust him, Ms. Nawakwi had allegedly now become a dictator.

“This is a woman who vigorously campaigned against former president Frederick Chiluba’s third term bid in the name of upholding democratic tenets and constitutionalism but she has failed to live by what she preached then because she thinks that Zambians have a short memory and can’t remember what she did to block Dr. Chiluba,” Mr. Musoma said.

He also lambasted FDD national chairperson Potiphar Chungu for failing to show leadership by allowing himself to be used in propagating Ms. Nawakwi’s manoeuvres to consolidate her stay in power at the expense of upholding intra-party democracy.

Meanwhile FDD Chama district chairman Yotum Mutayachalo says Ms Nawakwi is doing everything possible to block all those seen to be a threat to her leadership and against her third term bid.

In an interview yesterday, Mr Mutayachalo accused Ms Nawakwi of doing everything possible to block people who she perceived were a stumbling block to her ambitions to amend the constitution so that she could go for a third term.

Reacting to the expulsion of Mr Banda from the position of party vice president, Mr Mutayachalo said the district was demanding for a national convention to elect new leaders because the term for the current executive had expired and there was no legitimacy whatsoever.