Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000
By JACK MAPAPAYI
THE ruling Patriotic Front (PF) in North Western Province has opened doors to allow people wishing to contest in 2021 as Members of Parliament, councillors and council
chairmen to have their intentions known.
The aim is to create shadow MPs, councillors and council chairpersons who will be given enough leverage to inform the people in all wards, councils and constituencies across the province about what Government was doing.
This will include information on what development projects have been lined up as opposed to alleged lies being peddled by the opposition UPND.
PF provincial chairperson Emmanuel Chihili told the Daily Nation in an interview that all party members were at liberty to make their intentions known and start working through party structures who have been instructed to give equal opportunities to all the candidates.
“As earlier stated, as a party we have realised that opposition Members of Parliament are peddling lies against the Government at the expense of development,’’ he said.
He said the people of North Western Province have been denied a huge chance of representation especially at parliamentary level where MPs have been reduced to sheer spectators by their party leadership.
“They can only speak from a cocoon to appease their leaders on partisan lines and not speak for development of the province,” he said.
He said it was common knowledge that only the Government had the key to development and in this case it was the PF party which was running the affairs of the nation.
He accused MPs from North Western of being myopic by ‘‘knowingly and willingly being reduced to people who cannot distinguish between wrong and right’’.
“Today they will be told not to go to Parliament for State of the Nation address, and they will blindly oblige. And one day they will be told to jump into fire and they will gladly do it because they have lost that sense of resonance,” he said.
Mr Chihili said it was appalling that even after Justice Minister Given Lubinda informed the nation that there was no election petition anywhere for the 2016 general elections, MPs from the region had continued to mislead their ill-informed followers that there will soon be another President.
“This is incredible blindness and backwardness,” he said.
