By ADRIAN MWANZA
PF should go ahead and petition the Kabwata by-election result because the election was not free as they were dominated by malpractices and we challenge the church to condemn the gimmicks by the UPND, Zambia Republic Party (ZRP) President Wright Musoma has said.
Mr Musoma said that there was need to have fresh elections in Kabwata because the person who won the elections, Mr Andrew Tayengwa was not who the people wanted.
“Clement Tembo and Tayengwa should go back to the polls. We need to have fresh elections because we want the best candidate to win not someone who was helped by malpractices,” he alleged.
Mr Musoma saluted the move by the Christian Churches Monitoring Group, “for coming out from slumber and condemning injustices that were going on.”
He said the church played a very important role and that they needed to be more vocal and ensure that the right thing was done.
“We concur with the church and the recommendations they have made because they have stated the true picture of what was really on the ground,” he said.
Mr Musoma said he was very sure that the courts of law would overturn the result of the elections.
He said PF were right with the move because things like chasing PF observers and even strange power outages could have helped the UPND scoop the poll because it seemed calculated.
Furthermore, he said, the move by ECZ of denying people chance to accredit in order to protect the vote of their candidate was also questionable.
Mr Musoma said police brutality and intimidation could also have contributed to the ruling party winning the polls.
He said the ruling party’s candidate was not even a factor because the Socialist Party had an even better candidate but because of alleged machinations, he was able to come out victorious.
Meanwhile, former Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) general secretary Richard Kachingwe said there was need for stakeholders to dialogue with ECZ to find a lasting solution to the various problems being faced.
Major Kachingwe said that it was wrong for people to be running to the press but rather face the issue head on by meeting and ironing out their differences.
He said he was disappointed with the Zambia Centre for Interparty Dialogue (ZCID) because it was failing to deal with the pertinent issues that were being raised.
Maj Kachingwe said the reason the institution was formed was to deal with such situations but he was shocked that they had gone in oblivion.
