Sat, 19 Nov 2016 10:12:15 +0000
THE people pushing the agenda of removing Edith Nawakwi from the presidency of the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) are nothing but cowards who will only send the party into oblivion should they succeed in their schemes, Brebner Changala has charged.
And Mr Changala has observed that Ms Nawakwi has single-handedly kept the FDD alive and strong in the more than ten years she has been at the helm of the party and that any attempts to hound her out would spell doom to the party and democracy.
Mr Changala, who is a member of the FDD, said although it was true that Ms Nawakwi had been president of the FDD for more than ten years, it was equally true that the FDD leader had not served for two five year terms because she had only been elected once in 2005.Mr Changala stated that Ms Nawakwi was elected in 2005 as president of the FDD and that the opposition political party had never held a convention which could have culminated into the FDD leader serving two terms.
He observed that Ms Nawakwi had only managed to elongate her first term as president of the FDD to ten years with the help of the people who had now ganged up against her under the pretext that she had served terms.Mr Changala said going by the FDD constitution, Ms Nawakwi had never had a second term and that it was not correct to punish the opposition leader for a collective constitutional mistake for which all the party members stood accused.
He said Ms Nawakwi had worked extremely hard to make the FDD remain a political force on Zambia’s political scene and that the opposition party would remain safer, stronger and united if she (Nawakwi) remained at the helm of the party.“There was a time when I felt Ms Nawakwi needed to subject herself to a convention and the people fighting her today were quiet. The people fighting Ms Nawakwi today contributed to her overstaying her mandate because they are cowards. The FDD is what it is today because of Ms Nawakwi who has worked very hard to make the party remain a political force.
As a matter of fact, Ms Nawakwi has not served two terms because since her election in 2005, the FDD has never held a convention that could have resulted into Ms Nawawki getting a second term. So she (Nawakwi) does not need to amend the constitution to contest the president because she is eligible,” Mr Changala said.Mr Changala said if he was to attend the FDD convention scheduled for December this year, he was going to vote for Ms Nawakwi because all the people who were fighting her had no political clout to run the party.
He stated that there was a danger that the FDD could be consigned to the political archives if Ms Nawakwi was going to be hounded out of the opposition party.“It is not every Jim and Jack or Mary and Jane that can be a leader of a political party. For more than ten years, the FDD has been synonymous with the voice of Ms Nawakwi and in the recent times, that of Antonio Mwanza, the party’s spokesperson. The so called senior FDD members never defended at the time neither did they promote the ideals and principles of the FDD. They are just FDD members in absentia but Ms Nawakwi has remained a flag bearer of the party,” Mr Changala said.
