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Rupiah isn’t grateful to God – Mpombo

Rupiah isn’t grateful to God – Mpombo
Written by Patson Chilemba
Monday, October 19, 2009 7:10:53 AM

RUPIAH Banda is not being grateful to God, former defence minister George Mpombo has charged. And Mpombo has asked President Banda to take his stubbornness to his farm and not the party and the nation.

In an interview, Mpombo said a person like President Banda who came from nowhere to be vice-president and then President should be grateful to God.

Mpombo said President Banda was not grateful looking at the manner in which he was handling party and national issues. He said President Banda was doing a lot of damage to the country through his undemocratic governance, which would affect Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and donor funding to the country.

Mpombo attributed this to President Banda's selfishness.

“And surely Mr Banda should be grateful to God to bring him from where he is, as vice-president, and give him the presidency for three years. It is enough to thank God for that. I think he is being greedy and ungrateful to God,” Mpombo said.

“He is being greedy, and political greediness can plunge this country into problems. At the point we are, we appear to be a country plunged into some sort of irretrievable democratic and economic chaos unless Mr Banda is stopped. Mr Banda must be stopped in all uncertain terms.”

Mpombo reminded President Banda that neither did the sun shine in the country because of him nor was Zambia about him.

“Zambia is not about Mr Banda, no. That is a misnomer. That is self-deception. So what is important is let him pay a debt of gratitude to the party that brought him to power by organising the party,” Mpombo said.

“And I want to tell all members of MMD, they must act ruthlessly when the ugly head of dictatorship shows up. They must stand up. We must not go back to those days of dictatorship, of hero-worshipping. Zambia is not there just to please an individual, no.”

Mpombo said there was no doubt that President Banda would be clobbered heavily in 2011 in the event that the MMD adopted him as the candidate.

He said the MMD's defeat in the recent by-elections where they even lost some seats they held in Southern Province was a sign that people were fed up of President Banda.

“I can assure you there is no way Mr Banda can win in a general election. That is self-deception, and once he is clobbered in the election, he will pack up his bags to go to Chipata, and at that point, the MMD will remain leaderless. There will be total chaos. So we must protect our party from greediness,” Mpombo said.

He said the MMD's overwhelming defeat in Kasama was quite embarrassing and it should be a wake-up call.

Mpombo said President Banda camped in Kasama while Vice-President Kunda camped in Southern Province but the MMD was walloped.

“It shows the level of growing contempt for the MMD leadership because if you see the problems that are killing the party, there are so many things. You find that George Kunda has become a very incompetent puppet. He is a lawyer, he's not advising. He is just parroting all the time,” Mpombo said.

“You have this chap called Muzyamba, Muzyamba is the one who is encouraging Mr Banda to go ahead. Look at the last election, Muzyamba lost seven local government seats. This time around, we have lost our own seat but Muzyamba continues to parrot that Southern Province endorses Rupiah Banda.”

Mpombo said people like Vice-President Kunda had kept on chanting that the PF-UPND pact was breaking but the pact kept on winning elections.

“And instead of handling serious issues, you want to be talking about useless things like 'President wamuyaya [President forever]', sole candidate. Zambia should be an embarrassment even to [United States of America President Barack] Obama. Our own man is in the White House.

On President Banda's statement that he was stubborn, Mpombo asked President Banda to take his stubbornness to his farm where he would have his own way. He reminded President Banda that he was the servant of the people and it should be him to obey the people and not vice-versa.

“Absolutely, absolutely, that is what we are saying,” Mpombo said. “What I am saying, stubbornness is fit when you are running your personal farm. When you are running a country, you have got guidelines.”

Mpombo said stubbornness was a very negative and poor quality of leadership because true leaders should exhibit humility. He said Africa was bedeviled with a lot of factions because of the undemocratic nature of its leaders.

“Look, for instance, being stubborn, what can you gain from stubbornness if MMD now has lost Western Province as a result of being stubborn? Losing Copperbelt as a result of being stubborn, MMD losing even wards in Southern Province which were under its control as a matter of stubbornness,” Mpombo said.

“If he's stubborn, he's completely in the wrong field, so, you know if you are stubborn, the danger there is that stubbornness usually is a by-product of egocentric, politics of egocentric where you think everything revolves on yourself, where you even feel that to follow the constitution is doing a favour to the people.”

Mpombo said Zambia had become respected in the country but that image had now been reduced to a laughing stock because of President Banda's undemocratic rule.

Labels: GEORGE MPOMBO, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 6:11 AM