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Milanzi victory shows Rupiah is on strong ground – Kazonga

Milanzi victory shows Rupiah is on strong ground – Kazonga
By Chibaula Silwamba and Christopher Miti in Milanzi
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:30 CAT

OUR victory in Milanzi demonstrates that President Rupiah Banda is on very strong ground, MMD campaign manager for the just-ended Milanzi by-elections Dr Eustarckio Kazonga said yesterday.

Milanzi constituency by-elections returning officer Mukiti Lukonga declared MMD’s Whiteson Banda duly elected member of parliament for Milanzi constituency after polling 5, 120 votes against Patriotic Front (PF)’s Albert Banda who polled 2, 347 and UNIP’s Musa Banda got 2, 194 votes in elections held on Thursday.

In an interview, Dr Kazonga said Whiteson’s victory proved the confidence that the people of Milanzi have in President Banda, his government and the ruling party.

“As I indicated at the beginning of the campaign that ours will be issue based campaign and indeed we are able to sale our programme to the people of Milanzi and the people understood what we are doing and what we are going to do for them. The President is on very strong ground as demonstrated by these results,” Dr Kazonga said.

Whiteson said he was humbled that President Banda, the MMD national executive committee and the whole party machinery supported his candidature and pledged to help develop the constituency.

Asked if he had expected to win by a landslide, Whiteson responded: “I expected to win by this wide margin because people supported me, people really wanted me to be their MP.”

He urged the losing candidates to work with him because their interests too were to develop Milanzi. Whiteson, 35, also advised youths to join him in developing Milanzi.

“I want to encourage the young ones that they should join politics because us the youths are the future leaders. I am encouraging the young people to join politics,” Whiteson said.

“As member of parliament, my first priority is road network as you know in order for development to go well, we need proper road network. Milanzi is a rural constituency. People are farmers and once the farmer harvests he needs to take his produce to the market. So if you have good roads that is good.”

And MMD Eastern Province chairperson Kennedy Zulu said the wide margin between Whiteson and Albert Banda was an indication that the province was no go area for the opposition.

“The difference is more than 100 per cent. Even putting the two parties, UNIP and PF together we will still hammer them,” said Zulu.

“I want to thank the people of Milanzi for behaving themselves in a civil way because issues of violence were very minimal. This is the way it should be. To the opposition, Eastern Province is no go area for the opposition; we are strongly behind our President Rupiah Banda.”

And a consortium of elections observers – AVAP, SACCORD and Caritas Zambia – stated that the election largely reflected the wishes of the majority people of Milanzi constituency.

In a communiqué at the end of the by-elections, the three organisations stated that campaigns were peaceful but lacked content as the politicians concentrated on character assassination and “name calling”.

“We noted across all political parties that in their quest to win votes, they used food donations, cash exchange and sponsoring beer,” they stated.

They observed that the public media concentrated on the MMD candidate whereas the private media focused on the PF candidate.

“The reportage of this election left much to be desired in terms of language. Issues and seemed like it was a presidential race rather than parliamentary elections. This had the effect of overshadowing the candidates,” the civic organizations stated.

They stated that the polling day was peaceful, the turnout was fairly good and the majority of voters being women.

However, they observed that at Chamiwawa polling station, police officers were found managing voters.

“The counting was done to the satisfaction of the parties,” they stated, adding that the announcement and collation of results was transparent.

Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, EUSTARKIO KAZONGA, MMD

posted by MrK @ 4:29 AM