Sat, 04 Feb 2017 10:37:33 +0000
The UPND is planning big, UPND vice-president Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba has revealed.
In an interview at Moba Hotel in Kitwe yesterday, Mr Mwamba said that the UPND’s silence should not make people think that the largest opposition party had problems.
Instead, Mr Mwamba stressed that the party was doing underground work and planning big such that even the media could not know its plans.
He said that the UPND was intact and had not lost any members, alleging that if members had left the party, they could only be two or three.
And the UPND vice-president said that street vendors who were being removed from the streets of major towns on the Copperbelt were paying a price for deciding to vote for the PF despite UPND assuring them that if voted into government, they would not have done so.
He said the UPND had no such plans of removing street vendors from the city corridors of Kitwe.
“During campaigns, we told the streets vendors that if voted into government, we would not remove them from the city
corridors, but they decided to vote for PF. So those who have been removed from the corridors are paying a price for voting for PF. “Just like the illegal miners called Jerabos, they are also paying a price for supporting the PF in the run-up to the August 11 elections. We told them ‘let us work together’, but they refused,” Mr Mwamba said.
And UPND Copperbelt provincial information and publicity secretary Kennedy Kalunga has said UPND would continue to provide checks and balances to the ruling PF despite the harassment they were receiving from the State police.
Mr Kalunga said it was sad that whatever statement the UPND leadership issued, the police regarded it to be seditious and they were made to appear before the courts of law.
He said each time UPND leaders appeared in court, UPND supporters were stopped from attending to follow the court proceedings.
“However we are not going to be intimidated by this behaviour of police officers who have reduced themselves to PF cadres, but we will continue to provide checks and balances to the PF and tell them how they are waffling,” Mr Kalunga said.
