By KETRA KALUNGA
HAKAINDE Hichilema should be the last person to even talk about the fight against Covid-19 because in the first place he did not accept the outbreak of the pandemic in the country, the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) has said.
YALI President, Andrew Ntewewe, said that the UPND leader has no moral right to criticise the government over the fight against Covid-19.
Mr. Ntewewe said Mr Hichilema should not fool Zambians on how Covid-19 should be managed because he has little or no idea about how the government operates. He said in an interview that Mr Hichilema had initially argued that the Covid-19 outbreak was a hoax and accused Government of using the pandemic to organise money for campaigns from the donors.
“HH does not have any clear blueprint of how he is going to handle problems. He has no clue about how to fight Covid-19, and worse still he has no clue about how to manage an economy because he is full of playing to the political gallery even on very important matters,” he said.
Mr Ntewewe was reacting to Mr Hichilema’s remarks that once ushered into office he would immediately declare the Covid pandemic a national disaster and create a directorate under the President’s office to bring the pandemic under control.
Mr Hichilema said that the current leadership of the Patriotic Front (PF) has failed the people of Zambia during the pandemic and that many vibrant lives had been lost because the government failed to provide decent healthcare.
But Mr Ntewewe said Mr Hichilema should be the last person to criticise Government over matters he did not understand.
“For heaven’s sake this is a person who has never even been a councillor, he has not even been a civil society leader to understand how the governance systems operate.
“So, whatever he is saying, he is playing to the gallery, he can mislead a few but the Zambian people know that he cannot be trusted with national leadership,” he said.
