Thu, 08 Dec 2016 11:00:30 +0000
By Aaron Chiyanzo
THE UPND are dividing the nation by prohibiting their members from participating in national affairs because even people in their strongholds will start shunning away from national events, former Itezhi Tezhi Member of Parliament Greyford Monde has said.
Mr Monde claimed that the values for which he joined the UPND were no longer there because of UPND president Hakainde Hichilema’s hunger for the republican presidency.
He said that the party was no longer attractive and that it had diverted away from its original values on which it was premised.
The former Livestock and Fisheries minister in the PF government and losing candidate in the August elections warned that the move by the UPND to ban their members from attending State functions had the potential to divide the nation and that people in the party’s strongholds were likely to shun national events.
He pointed out that the UPND MPs that the party was banning from attending State functions only contested elections on the party ticket but they were voted for by the people.
Mr Monde said that forbidding party members from attending national events was an infringement of their rights and tantamount to imprisonment.
“I know those MPs now feel like they are in prison, caged. And people in Southern, North Western and Western provinces, which are UPND strongholds, will also stop attending national events. This will divide the nation if tolerated,” he warned.
Mr Monde pointed out that Government represented the people of Zambia regardless of their political affiliations and that national events were for the Zambian people.
He said that Mr Hichilema had completely ignored the tenets of democracy and wondered how the situation would have worsened under his leadership.
“And I even wonder how our democracy would have been sidelined if Mr Hichilema had won the last presidential elections,” said Mr Monde.
He said if UPND wanted to boycott the State, they should stay away from everything because MPs were still getting allowances from Government.
He said that it was a sad situation that Mr Hichilema’s hunger for power had led him to get to such levels of caging his own MPs like common criminals.
Mr Monde noted that there was a big shift in the way the UPND articulated issues from the time he joined the party and now.
He said former UPND leaders used to get into constructive debates with Government that in the end benefitted the Zambian people.
