Maravi

Madyenkuku urges Rupiah to leave in 2011

Madyenkuku urges Rupiah to leave in 2011
By George Chellah
Tue 01 Dec. 2009, 04:00 CAT

THE MMD has been hit by a self-inflicted tornado whose full magnitude we are yet to know, MMD founder member and former Sinazongwe member of parliament Syacheye Madyenkuku has said.

And Madyenkuku said the people surrounding President Rupiah Banda have a very shallow understanding of the MMD philosophy and that the party membership must just resign to fate because then MMD under the current leadership cannot reform.
In an interview, Madyenkuku, who served in the MMD national executive committee (NEC) as an elected member from 1995 to 2001 before the late Levy Mwanawasa brought him back in 2007 to 2008, urged President Banda to keep his promise and leave the Presidency at the end of his term.

He said leaving as earlier promised would be President Banda's own contribution in attempting to revive the MMD.

“By doing that, he will have gone a long way in helping the MMD to resuscitate itself. Although it's already going to do that in very precarious and extremely difficult circumstances because as we are speaking now MMD has been hit by a tornado, it has been hit by a self-inflicted tornado whose full magnitude we are yet to know,” he said.

Madyenkuku said President Banda must not offer himself for the presidency because he promised to serve for only three years.

“If you want to look at the people surrounding President Banda, their understanding of the MMD philosophy is very shallow because they are basically all new and old members like Katele Kalumba, Jeff Kaande clearly you can see that they are on the periphery,” he said.

Madyenkunku also denounced the u-turn on the convention adding that if held, the convention would only be a mere circus.

“This is actually very deceptive to begin with. It is public knowledge that the MMD leadership did not want to go to the convention, there is no secret about it. But following public pressure they have been forced to concede and instead of coming clean that they have been able to see the point that people are making and that they regret having wanted to stop the convention, they are claiming that nobody in the MMD said there will be no convention whatsoever, a matter which is not true,” Madyenkuku said.

“They are unable to come out and admit that they were wrong. This convention will not have any meaningful purpose whatsoever because it will have a serious credibility deficiency. To put it straight, it will be a sham! It is a desperate manouvre to hoodwink the people and the general membership at large that there will be a free expression of their views.

“Right now as I am speaking to you, the machinery is already underway on the ground to even influence the outcome of the district and subsequently the provincial elections so that only those who toll the line can be able to win positions in these structures and even at the end of day individuals are going to be picked at random to go to the convention. This is contrary to the provisions of the electoral regulations of the MMD constitution, which specify which office bearers could go to the convention.”

He maintained that it was pointless to hold the convention.
“MMD members must just resign to fate because it is going to serve no meaningful purpose. The MMD under the current leadership cannot reform. You need an extraordinary national plan, which is not in sight as far as I can see to revive the MMD. It is irreformable, it is incorigable, it has totally departed from the principles upon which we formed this party for which some of us were detained as political detainees in 1990,” Madyenkuku said.

“The general membership of the party has fled to other parties. We have just a skeleton membership of very demoralised and demotivated cadres who cannot even rally the people behind MMD.

“He (President Banda) promised the people of Zambia that he wanted just to complete three years of the Mwanawasa period and it will be honourable for him to leave up to his promise. That was the promise during the campaign…I had given advice when I was a member of the NEC at the time when president Mwanawasa died because I saw that the party was digressing from the democratic path which it had always stood for. I gave him very honest advice in that meeting, which cost me my place in the NEC subsequently,” Madyenkuku said.

“Right now I know there are men and women of very high integrity in the NEC who have very sound ideas but who are afraid of speaking out because of the well-known consequence. I think that this convention is not going to solve any purpose whatsoever and I would not advise anybody to even attempt to stand at the convention because they are just going to legitimise an already predetermined outcome.”

Madyenkuku said MMD has stopped running the party on the basis of the outlined constitutional guidelines.

“It is now just running like a Kamikazi camp and the general rank and file as I have told you have deserted. That's why you find in some ward by-elections, the results they are getting are fewer than the number of party officials in the party structures in those wards put together. Just ask yourself how come?” Madyenkuku asked.

“We should be under no illusion that the forthcoming convention will serve any purpose whatsoever. It will not even be enough to hold it in order to revive the public confidence that is fast eroding, an erosion of the magnitude of melting ice-cream in summer heat.”

Labels: ELECTIONS, RUPIAH BANDA, SYACHEYE MADYENKUKU

posted by MrK @ 3:49 AM