Rupiah and his ministers are confused – Nawakwi

COMMENT - This is the state of healthcare under neoliberal economics.

Rupiah and his ministers are confused – Nawakwi
By Chibaula Silwamba
Tue 30 Mar. 2010, 04:01 CAT

FDD president Edith Nawakwi yesterday charged that President Rupiah Banda and his ministers are confused. And Nawakwi challenged Vice-President George Kunda to explain if he was contemplating becoming a murderer or hiring assassins to put her in the ditch.

Reacting to President Banda's remarks against her in Mazabuka last Friday that she was mad for saying that the situation in most clinics in Lusaka was deplorable, Nawakwi castigated the President.

“It's madness for him to go to Mazabuka and not go to Mazabuka Hospital. That is sheer madness. He should have been speaking, not from a political podium, but he should have been speaking from Mazabuka Hospital and say, 'look I am in Mazabuka Hospital, things are okay',” Nawakwi said.

“It would have made sense if he was in hospital saying that, 'these politicians, what are they saying? I am at Mazabuka Hospital and medicines are here'. He would have made me look foolish.

“Has he been to any clinic himself? You should ask him, 'Mr President have you been to any clinic in the last two months?' Those are the questions. How can he contradict his own minister, the government spokesperson? The government spokesperson came out clearly that carrying buckets to hospitals is in fact is government policy. And here is the President contradicting his own government spokesperson. That is why I tell them that they are confused. Information minister and chief government spokesperson Ronnie Shikapwasha in all fairness came out in the open that the ‘bucket-scheme’ is government policy.”

Nawakwi said her advice to President Banda about the deplorable state of health institutions was sincere and he should not brush it aside.

“The challenge to the President is extremely simple; we go on a joint tour of these clinics. Is it too much to ask my own head of state that I have time to accompany him to see for himself what is happening in these clinics?” Nawakwi asked.

“At Filter Clinic, people are on the floor and that is for public eyes to see. The minimum we expect from a head of state is to simply embark on an on the spot check before he starts calling his own subjects and followers mad,” Nawakwi said.

“In any case, we are advising him that people are suffering and that is not an insult. Any clever person will realise that things are bad. If he is doing everything possible to improve health sector, why are people going out of this country for treatment? That is what I want to find out. Why are his own colleagues in government finding themselves as medical tourists in India? Those are the issues. Does everybody have access to those facilities? A lone police officer in Livingstone who they have not attended to who is nursing bullet wounds? Why haven't they taken him to India? The point is that we cannot all be seen to be going out of this country. We are asking for adequate medical facilities.”

Nawakwi maintained that President Banda did not have right advisors.

“Tell Rupiah that Edith Nawakwi is available. Can I accompany him to tour clinics in Kanyama, Chawama, Chipata compound and other places to see the situation there? That will take half a day. That is all I am asking him before he starts calling me names. Otherwise, I continue to say ayasu is not thinking and he has no people around him to assist him; they have no capacity. Even the few that have little capacity like George Kunda, they are being tired, they are now party cadres,” Nawakwi said.

She asked President Banda to reflect on his way of managing government affairs.

“The challenge to ayasu our friend President Banda is that these people around him, most of them are jobseekers. They have no means of survival. He should listen to some of us who are outside his circle. You look at some of these people, they only joined MMD because they realised that the late president had no way out other than to give them jobs and President Rupiah Banda has kept them hanging on. Out of there, they will be cycling like some of us on the streets, with no means of survival, not even one acre of kalembula… they will be destitutes. So, he should reflect,” Nawakwi said.

In reference to Nawakwi's recent statement that pregnant women at Chipata Clinic in Lusaka where being asked to dispose of placentas and other waste after giving birth, addressing people that welcomed him in Mazabuka on Friday, President Banda said: “You don't go to one clinic and you don't find medicine there, then you say, 'there is no medicine in the clinics!' That is madness.”

On Vice-President Kunda's threats that she will find herself in the ditch, Nawakwi said she feared for her life bearing in mind that the statements come shortly after MMD cadres in Lusaka threatened to gang rape her.

“In any case, the right honourable learned Vice-President and absentee Minister of Justice has said that I will find myself in a ditch. I am wondering whether the right honourable Vice-President is contemplating being a murderer because that is one way of finding myself in the ditch, or hiring assassins to put me in a ditch. I certainly want clarification on what type of ditch I will find myself in. Who is going to dig the ditch? Is he the one who is going to supervise my being in the ditch?” Nawakwi asked. “He argues that I am insulting the President. It is surprising that simple words are called insults and obviously it's the reflection of the level of education that this country is given, that people don't understand simple advice. When I say these people don't listen, this is on record. Ministers saying we didn't read the document before we signed. We see ministers fighting in public. So these are some of the things that are in public domain. One wonders why he gets so tempted to respond without thinking.”

Nawakwi observed that Vice-President Kunda had been worn out by undertaking local trips campaigning for President Banda's re-election in next year's elections.

“One honourable Kunda is being sent all around; he is talking his lungs out. The message for my brother is very simple; he should be careful. By the time you get him from wherever is to the nearest clinic it will be a disaster. That is one way of clearly putting someone out of the political system. Instead of attending to Ministry of Justice and the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, he is not even able to sit down and advise the President to declare the floods a disaster,” Nawakwi said. “He is busy campaigning. He is now a campaign manager for Rupiah for very simple reasons: he needs a job but this job is tiring. This job is wearing him thin and leaving him with very little space to think about the very job that we gave him as Vice-President and as justice minister. Any normal thinking government should have declared what is happening in this country as a disaster. The floods are a disaster but the person in charge of this disaster Vice-President Kunda is a disaster himself.”

Nawakwi said it was the MMD's strategy to abuse Vice-President Kunda in campaigns.

“It's a strategy for MMD. You people have said that the President is about to replace the Vice-President and the President, obviously, has assured him that ‘I can't replace you’. So what is happening is that he is sending him running around the country campaigning, tiring the Vice-President with no space for intellectual analysis. He is talking from without,” Nawakwi said. “It's a shame because he is one of the few people around the President you expect to advise the President but they are tiring the young man for very specific reasons that by the time they get to the convention, Kunda will be so tired that he will even forget to file in his nomination as one of the candidates.”

Nawakwi advised Vice-President Kunda to be careful and not to be abused.

“Where they are sending him, are there medical facilities to attend to him at short notice? There are not there. They are being unfair to young Kunda. He is in government, they have the instruments of power so I need to know which kind of ditch I will find myself in,” said Nawakwi.

Speaking during the launch of the MMD membership renewal exercise at Kitwe's City Square on Saturday, Vice-President Kunda said it was criminal for Nawakwi to insult the President.

“She has won the recognition but she has done it in a wrong way, very soon she will fall in a ditch,” warned Vice-President Kunda.