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MMD will suffer heavier defeats in 2011 – Mpombo

MMD will suffer heavier defeats in 2011 – Mpombo
Written by Mutuna Chanda in Kitwe
Friday, September 11, 2009 4:58:17 PM

FORMER defence minister George Mpombo has warned that MMD will suffer heavier defeats in 2011 than UNIP did in 1991 if it does not change direction. And Mpombo said the current regime of President Rupiah Banda has no coherent policy on the fight against corruption. Mpombo said there was a wrong perception that those who opposed government were enemies.

"As a political pundit myself I can tell you that we are in troubled waters unless we change. If we don't change, if Rupiah Banda continues to surround himself with these political nincompoops then we have problems," Mpombo said when he featured on Radio Icengelo's Face to Face with the Community in Kitwe last Saturday.

"You see the current political atmosphere, the current political landscape is very turbulent and unless people come out of a cocoon of self-deception where people are cheating themselves that they are with the people when people are on the other side completely, I can see MMD being under the same situation we were under UNIP, I was governor for Ndola Rural and Rupiah Banda was governor for Lusaka and we would be telling Dr Kaunda that things were okay and when elections came, we were whipped like nobody's business. So unless MMD changes direction, we are going to suffer massive defeat even larger in terms of scale like UNIP suffered because there is intolerance.

"Now if MMD, the current leadership, your members are used to go to the convention you want to stop them, who do you think will vote for you? And in the country the picture you are giving you want to do 'tough guy' approach all the time that you are in power, that's abuse of power. You are abusing power; power means you have to have humility and be accountable to the people."

He warned that the MMD would have factions that would hold a convention if it succumbed to orchestrations of postponing the convention due next year.

"The party's constitution says we must go to the convention. It is the convention that stamps its authority on a candidate to stand," he said.

"It is not a few groups of appointed officials like NEC, by the way in NEC there are many officials appointed by Mr Rupiah Banda who would want to tow his particular line. So this is a very sad development. My appeal to party members; in fact even to the President; the President when he joined MMD he found a party constitution and let him respect that constitution. There is no shortcut, no cutting of corners because it would be unconstitutional.

You know in 2001 when there was a wrangle involving 22 members of parliament, we had gone to Mulungushi for a convention and the convention mandated NEC to go back to Lusaka and elect somebody to lead the party. It was with the mandate of the convention. So this time there is no mandate from the convention which says elections must be skipped and if people went ahead with that kind of narrow and parochial thinking, the party is going to disintegrate because I can assure you that we are going to have a faction in MMD that is going to go for elections and let those who are entertaining UNIPIST ideas like those close to President Banda and his colleagues; these people are not interested in the welfare of the party because if they were, they should have been embarking on building the party through consensus building.

"Now they want to do, they are involved in clandestine operations of going to provinces; you go round and get signatures from districts, branch and whatever, we send to Lusaka that there is no need for a convention. That is a very, very serious negative development. Those are the issues that could kill the party and I don't think Mr Banda wants to be remembered as the man who single-handedly killed MMD because of certain considerations."

He said the statements that were being issued on postponing the convention were not a reflection of the MMD's entire membership.

"There is an orchestrated campaign to stage-manage these resolutions. Somebody from Lusaka will go into the provinces even offer financial support for these provincial leaders to issue these statements," Mpombo said.

"It is petty to think that what those provincial chairmen are saying then it is a true reflection of the people, it is not at all. Now if the party went ahead with such a dictatorial position, if they want to usurp the powers of the people what is very clear is that MMD will capsize; MMD will end up like the former ruling party, UNIP. I have walked, I have met people; people are not happy. What we have is a small agenda driven by people who perceive themselves to be close to Rupiah Banda and I think they advise him wrongly. A good leader, you must have the mandate of the people; if he is good leader, let him go and stand at the convention and stand with other people.

"It's a lot of nonsense when people say that anyone who wants to stand as a president he must indicate the amount of support he has given to the party; that is nonsense, that is a load of nonsense because any member of the party regardless of his station and contribution in the party has got a right, an inalienable right to stand as a candidate; the only people that have the power to stop him it's the delegates to the convention. So no one, in fact it's unconstitutional to ask some people like [Professor Clive] Chirwa, [Ng'andu] Magande to indicate the contribution they have made to the party. The party does not belong to an individual and you don't start changing rules when you are about to go into the ring. So the most honourable thing to do is to allow any member of the party that wants to stand to stand. The ideas to say that the party will be divided, that is nonsense; MMD has been holding conventions and people obviously in an election, there are differences. At the end of the day they gang up together. Even in UNIP when we had one party state, we had Kavindele going to the convention to stand. So what kind of democracy are we trying to introduce in to the country? This behaviour is quite appalling and very, very shameful."

And Mpombo said there was no coherent policy on the fight against corruption under President Banda compared with the time of late president Levy Mwanawasa.

"I don't think we have a coherent policy per se. Whatever we are doing now cannot be compared to the efforts of the late president," he said. "And because we became jealous of his achievements in the international level, what do we do? We started cooking up stories to blemish his image. You must see how cruel some people could be. Right now there are people who are sending very malicious articles on the Internet; Levy what ... But you see what I am trying to say is that the fight in Levy's time was more coherent, was more pronounced, was more respected as opposed to now and the picture is mixed."

He further said the government had badly handled issues relating to the acquittal of former president Frederick Chiluba.

"You know the leadership has badly handled this particular issue. Very, very badly handled; they have done a bad job. The other day you have the President commenting, the other day it's the Vice-President just misleading statements, so there is a breakdown, what I would call a total systems failure in government in handling these sensitive matters. Because what government should have done, this is a very sensitive matter; they should have refrained from giving statements that are giving an indication government had a hand in this," Mpombo said.

"You know the President is talking about this, the other one is talking about this, I think this kind of attitude as government is certainly very, very baffling... of course the courts have acquitted Dr Chiluba but what we are saying is that the whole issue has been badly managed by government. The statements that have been issued by government have given a very, very bad picture to the extent that people now are trying to doubt, even to cast aspersions on the quality of our courts. It's because of government's loose conduct, government loose comments."

Mpombo also asked information minister Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha to apologise to the Catholic Church for attacking them recently.

Labels: ELECTIONS, GEORGE MPOMBO, MMD

posted by MrK @ 4:01 PM