BEWARE OF SMEAR CAMPAIGN, ZAMBIANS WARNED

Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:37:19 +0000

By Oscar Malipenga

A VICIOUS campaign to convince Zambians that President Edgar Lungu and his cabinet ministers are corrupt has been launched by certain international firm which are now sponsoring outspoken political figureheads to attack the government alleging corruption in the awarding of contracts.

Currently, there is a clear motive by certain international firms to paint the Zambian government and its leadership black in terms of corruption and they are using certain outspoken citizens to criticise the government and accuse it of corruption, a member of the Patriotic Front (PF) publicity committee, Brian Hapunda has disclosed.

He said certain international firm had seen it fit to sponsor some outspoken political figureheads to attack the Zambian government with corruption
allegations.

Mr Hapunda’s revelations follows political comments regarding the fire tender and the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway deals among other government contracts.

“We have seen that there was clearly a motive by certain international firm to paint the Zambian government and its leadership black in terms of corruption and they are using certain outspoken citizens in this country to criticise the government and accuse it of corruption,” he said.

Mr Hapunda said well-known politicians who were sympathetic to the opposition had taken up the fight by actually jumping on board on behalf of certain international firms to champion a fight that the Zambian government  and its leadership were corrupt.

“This is unfortunate and that they must be able to distinguish between business and politics because you cannot mix the two and later on accuse the government that they are corrupt simply because a certain company did not win the business battle.

“So this is purely a business political fight and also we have seen that certain individuals are being used to help fight the cause of certain international firms in painting the Zambian government black but I am happy that President Lungu has affirmed to say that whichever person or company that is aggrieved in this fire tender truck are free to walk to the ACC and be able to report this matter and put their evidence which if at all they have any evidence to the investigative agencies,” Mr Hapunda said.

He appealed to Zambians not to be misled by a certain international frim that had vested business interest in government contracts such as fire tenders.

Mr Hapunda said, clearly, it was a fight between a losing bidder and a winning bidder and as such they had seen that business politics coming into play.

Mr Hapunda wondered why in the fire truck tender the highest bidder Albion quoted U$S49.5 million was the one complaining against a Zambian firm Grand View International which quoted U$S7.5 million less.

He alerted Zambians to pay particular attention to certain international firms that wanted to reap Zambia’s tendering process by subjecting unreasonable terms.