By NATION REPORTER
THE United Party for National Development (UPND) has never won a fair and free election and the results of the just ended by-elections are not a true reflection of the free will of the people, Given Lubinda has charged.
But Batuke Imenda, the UPND secretary general has said the ruling party was up against the Patriotic Front (PF) which according to him is a well-funded opposition political party and is elated that the ruling party is growing across the country.
Meanwhile, Chishimba Kambwili says the UPND have not won the local government by-elections but had merely managed to fix the results in their favour and their celebrations were but self-deceit.
Mr Lubinda, the PF acting president said the UPND had perfected their art and skills of electoral malpractice to win every election at all costs but declared that the former ruling party was not going to sit and watch the tenets of democracy being dismantled. (To page3)
Mr Lubinda said the violence that characterized the campaigns in the last local government by-elections was unprecedented but that the PF was going to employ all the means in its power to ensure that Zambia did not degenerate into a totalitarian state.
He said in an interview that the UPND was enjoying a combination of the perfected art of electoral malpractice, violence, intimidation and state power to blur Zambia’s democratic credentials.
“As the PF, we have rejected the results of the just ended by-elections because they are not a true reflection of the free will of the people. We know that the will of the majority of Zambians is still with the PF. The more than 20 years the UPND was in opposition had made it possible for the ruling party to perfect their art of violence, electoral malpractice. But we have to stop the UPND from entrenching dictatorship. The UPND victory is false and the ruling party is in false cloud and they are living in vanity…in their own lies and deceit,” Mr Lubinda said.
But Mr Imenda said the UPND emerged victorious because of the developmental messages it was taking to the electorates.
Mr Imenda said the ruling party was elated with the win particularly that the victory was in areas that were once considered to be strongholds for the PF.
He said the UPND was up against the PF which according to him was well-funded than the ruling party but that Zambians were not looking for freebies from the former ruling party but messages of development and hope for the future.
“The UPND as a party is growing and what is more elating is that we are penetrating the Eastern, the Northen and Luapula Provinces which were once considered strongholds for the PF. In fact we felt that we were up against the PF that is a well-funded political party but our message of development and hope delivered the victory for the UPND. The recruitment of teachers and health workers and the increase in the CDF were messages that were resonating well with the people. We however have some challenges such as the need to fine-tune the process of delivering CDF so that our people are not inconvenienced,” Mr Imenda said.
Mr Lubinda statistically tabulated the UPND electoral malpractices as follows:
> Delivering of relief food to polling districts during the campaign period;
> Rampant intimidation occasioned against our members and supporters
> Violence inflicted on our members and supporters;
> Threats to voters to be removed from government relief programmes such as
FISP and SCT in the event of PF winning elections;
> Arresting of our preferred candidates on nomination day;
> Preventing our candidates from filing nominations;
> Open vote buying;
> Use of pre-marked ballot papers;
> Use of surrogate NGOs to intimidate our polling agents;
> Preventing our members from voting by grabbing their voter’s cards;
> Forcibly removing of our polling agents from polling stations during vote
counting;
> Seizing of PF motor vehicles meant to mobilize still in the custody of security wings without any plausible explanation
Mr Lubinda said with the malpractices tabulated above, no one should give credit to the outcome of the elections because they were a sham and a blow to democracy which he said the PF was not going to accept.
