‘Whoever is elected MMD president won’t be automatic candidate’

‘Whoever is elected MMD president won’t be automatic candidate’
By Patson Chilemba
Fri 05 Feb. 2010, 04:00 CAT

MMD national secretary Katele Kalumba yesterday said he will first consider his family and health before he decides to defend his party position because he has suffered a lot over the last 10 years.

And Kalumba said whoever will be elected president at the MMD convention will not be an automatic Republican presidential candidate for the party.

When asked in an interview yesterday if he would re-contest the position of national secretary at the MMD convention, Kalumba said he had gone through rough times in the last 10 years.

“What is important for me right now is my health. The second most important for me is my family. I think my family and I have suffered a lot in the last 10 years, and I really wouldn’t want to put my family through these kind of stresses that I have gone through,” Kalumba said. “But I have to consult them to tell me what they feel, and therefore as far as I am concerned, I have not taken a decision.”

And Kalumba said the MMD national executive committee (NEC) had endorsed President Rupiah Banda as the party’s Republican presidential candidate.

Asked to clarify if the one who would be elected president at the party convention would not be the party’s automatic candidate for the Republican presidency, Kalumba responded: “It is never like that, as you know. But the party president must be elected by the convention.”

Kalumba said the NEC would present its recommendation on President Banda to the convention.

He said rules would guide the convention on how to handle the two positions, party and Republican presidencies.

Kalumba said the convention previously elected president Levy Mwanawasa and endorsed him as the party’s presidential candidate.

“The other year in 2001, they elected president Chiluba as party president but they left open the candidature of the Republican presidency,” he said.

Asked on what would happen if the convention decided otherwise by endorsing the person who would be elected to contest the Republican presidency, Kalumba said the statement was presumptuous.

“What is factual is that the convention is the supreme organ, but it has to receive the decisions of NEC, because NEC acts on behalf of the convention, in between conventions. The convention will have to be very violently against its own body by removing the powers it gives it in between conventions,” Kalumba said.

He asked aspiring candidates in the MMD to stop campaigning until the party issued directives for them to start doing so.

Asked if Lusaka Province MMD chairperson Chris Chalwe and his colleagues would be disciplined by the party for threatening to gang-rape FDD president Edith Nawakwi, Kalumba said police were handling the matter.