Maravi

Chiluba was a damn good president – Rupiah

Chiluba was a damn good president – Rupiah
Written by Chiwoyu Sinyangwe and Zumani Katasefa in Mansa
Sunday, July 26, 2009 4:53:09

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda has said former president Frederick Chiluba was a “damn good president.” Featuring on a special programme on Radio Yangeni in Mansa last Friday, President Banda described Chiluba as having been a damn good president and that if he were ever convicted, he would not be a leper.

President Banda said Chiluba deserved to be respected for his contribution during his tenure as Republican president.

"First of all, Mr Chiluba is not my enemy and is not a very good friend of mine... Mr Chiluba is my former president, your former president and the former president of every Zambian. I didn't elect him," President Banda said.

"As a matter of fact, I belonged to another political party which voted against him. But I know that [Luapula Province minister] Dr [Borniface] Kawimbe fought for him to be president. The majority of your people here supported him. He is former president; you have to accord certain respect that he deserves. I did not make that law or that custom of respecting elderly people.

"And in any case, I am not the court, I am only President. So, if you and Dr Kawimbe here have a quarrel, I don't take sides in that matter. President Chiluba is in courts, the courts will decide. I can even go further than that and say it doesn't mean that after he has been convicted, he becomes a leper, that I should not be able to talk to him. That I should not be able to invite him. The prisoners...our own people who are in prison here is Mansa and in every town in this country, in every village; they are still Zambians. They are still human beings and they have to be treated with the dignity of a human being."

President Banda said he would continue to respect Chiluba and invite him to state functions.

"...There is a list at State House, if that is what the people are referring to, of people who are entitled to be invited to state functions and Dr Chiluba has always been there. Dr Kaunda has always been there, and I hope I will always be there when I do leave," President Banda said. "And the fact that he may not have turned up when he was invited to these function, that is between himself and those who were inviting him. He does turn up when I invite him."

President Banda said Chiluba should be credited for removing the one-party system and restoring freedom of expression in the country.

"And this business of trying people on the radio, on the TV, in the newspapers, at rallies must stop. We are going to wreck this country and I want to take advantage of this opportunity to reiterate my own position on this matter," President Banda said. "President Chiluba is a former president of this country and I beg the Zambian people to give him the dignity and so on. If there are a few eccentrics who want to use him into their weeping boy; that is their business. That is their kind of politics. As far as I am concerned, I did not even belong to his political party, at that time, I did not belong to the MMD. If anything, I should be the one holding a grudge against him but he was a president and I think he was a damn good president. Even this radio station has a lot to thank Dr Chiluba for its existence because before he and his colleagues, many of you who are seated here who fought the one-party system that did not allow for the freedom of radio stations, community radio stations, newspapers, free speech, political parties etc. all that, you must give it Dr Chiluba whether you like it or not.

"That is what we do to our own parents as well whether your father is small or whether he is big; whether he is rich or whether he is poor, but he is your father. So, if they think differently from me, they should not force me to think like them. Rupiah Bwezani Banda believes that Dr Kaunda is our founding father, and yesterday, I am proud to announce to the listeners that I had lunch with him in Ndola and the people surrounded the place and said 'they felt very good to see the current president eating with the first president of this country', and if it was Dr Chiluba who was in Ndola yesterday, I would have loved to have him there and eat with me.

President Banda also said the government could not refuse the mobile hospitals concept as it was an offer given free of charge by a foreign country and that money would not be diverted from the treasury.

He announced that donor countries that withdrew funding to the Ministry of Health following revelations of mass theft of public funds had started funding the ministry.

President Banda cited the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and Sweden as partners that had resumed funding and that the European Union (EU) was committed to helping the country financially too.

"The US $53 million we are referring to, that is an offer from a foreign country to the Republic of Zambia and that includes medicines and doctors, nurses, equipment, fuel, water and all that is required in a mobile hospital is provided by them. If you were in my position, I am sure you would accept that and that is side by side we will continue with our programme of mobile hospitals," President Banda said. "These hospitals will not be funded from the budget. If we are taking money from the budget in order to introduce the mobile hospitals, then the arguments that the opposition are raising would be valid. But this is a programme for which a foreign government is prepared to fund. It is their suggestion. They are prepared to give us in excess of US $50 million in order to provide these facilities to us. Surely, who am I to say to the people who are giving us the money which will go directly to the rural areas... and these hospitals are not for the cities, these hospitals are for the most rural. Where there is a road where these hospitals can go, it will go. If they can't go, then of course, they can't go. We will send an aircraft or a four wheel-drive."

On the calls for the parliamentarians to defer their mid-term gratuity, President Banda said: "This is a contractual obligation legalised in the laws of Zambia. I did not create it. As a President, I follow the laws for this country and one of those laws of this country, there is law for the contract between employee and employer...as President of this country, I have a contract with the people of Zambia and I have condition of services as stipulated by law."

Earlier, President Banda said he was not a failure contrary to his critics.

Speaking on arrival at Mansa airport on Friday enroute to the Mutomboko traditional ceremony held in Mwansabombwe on Saturday, President Banda said a failure was a person who tried something and failed.

"I saw one day in the paper, I saw the headline which read 'Rupiah is a failure'. I am not going to mention the paper, you know it. A failure is one person who tries and fails. The person who was saying that has failed three times. Myself I tried only once and I am a President. Now the one saying I am a failure tried to make a pact he had failed," President Banda said. "Our party will show them again, they will again fail in 2011. That is why they are insulting me, they have failed to go to State House. The only way people will vote for us is if we continue working for them."

President Banda said nobody would remove him and his government from power and urged Zambians to continue praying so that he could continue to be strong and work for them.

Labels: CHILUBA, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 3:53 AM