Red Cards irritate Rupiah in Mpulungu

Red Cards irritate Rupiah in Mpulungu
By Mwala Kalaluka in Mpulungu
Sun 24 Oct. 2010, 04:50 CAT

File Picture: A PF supporter flashing a red card againts the MMD government in Kitwe
PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda on Friday asked why a group of young Mpulungu residents had been allowed to stand in a small corner of the town and flash their “silly” red cards at him and his motorcade.

And before addressing his last campaign rally in Mpulungu town, President Banda called for a minute of silence in honour of the late Mpulungu MMD parliamentarian, Lameck Chibombamilimo, whom he unceremoniously sacked and expelled at a State House MMD rally last year.

Meanwhile, Mpulungu’s Stella Maris Catholic Church parish priest Fr Chisanga Takuyamabwe said he is of the view that President Banda’s MMD did not do its homework when it sacked the late Chibombamilimo.

Addressing a rally at Muzabwera Grounds in Mpulungu town, President Banda said he had observed that whenever he passed through a certain point of Mpulungu on his way to campaign, a group of people usually flashed red cards at him.

President Banda was referring to the area around Mpulungu’s Chamuluzi Guest House, where the PF have mounted a symbolic boat along the road, which they guard for the better part of the day with or without police watching them.

The cadres take advantage of the spot to jeer and flash red cards at the MMD and government leadership.

President Banda described the group as ba mambala (crooks).

“You know we have got four, three or four days before the voting on the 25th for the new member of parliament for Mpulungu. Ourselves from the Movement for Multi-party Democracy since I came here, since my colleagues have come here our business is to go round,” President Banda said.

“You don’t see us standing in corners and waving red cards as if we are from a football match. Why are you flashing me your silly red card? Why are you allowing young people who have been given tujilijili by the leaders of the other opposition party to be waving red cards to people who are campaigning?”

President Banda said he was surprised that the young people were flashing red cards at him when he did not even vote in Mpulungu but in his hometown, Chipata.
“I don’t want my colleagues, my party to go anywhere where Mr. Sata is campaigning,” President Banda said. “Leave them alone and please leave us alone as well.”

President Banda, who described PF leader Michael Sata, as a chisilu (a mad man), said campaigning was not about castigating somebody else but telling the people what you were going to do for them and how.

“Let them (the opposition) tell you the truth whether we haven’t built anything for the benefit of the people here. How can they come here and say as they call me, to say Rupiah, RB has done nothing. Is that nothing? Are you not the people who said to me in 2008 that you want the road from Mbala to here to be fixed.

Didn’t you want this road to be fixed? Is it a bad thing that we have built a road?” President Banda asked. “I know you are happy and I am happy that this happened under my leadership.”

President Banda said he was happy that Sata and him were not young people anymore and both would be judged on their current and past records.

And President Banda said he had realised how important it was that the MMD majority should continue in parliament. He said for as long as he was President, Mpulungu Harbour, which the government repossessed recently, would never go back to its previous owner, as he was claiming.

Meanwhile, Fr Takuyamabwe said President Banda’s government should have consulted the people of Mpulungu before sacking the late Chibombamilimo.

“I think this by-election was unforeseen in the sense that we lost the area member of parliament in the name of Honourable Chibombamilimo and the Honourable was quite loved by the people. You would see how the masses voted for him,” Fr. Takuyamabwe said in an interview.

“I think as a church and as a church leader, I wouldn’t be in a position to state why the Honourable was fired but the sacking came as a shock to the entire citizenry in the constituency,” Fr Takuyamabwe said. “Maybe the man spoke his mind and maybe we can’t speculate. We leave that to the politicians.”
He said at the end of the day it was up to the people of Mpulungu to choose their best candidate in the by-election.

“People are crying for change not because they are fed up of the system but because we have turned the system. They are talking about personalities and not issues,” Fr Takuyamabwe said. “We don’t want people who come here to castigate others, to insult others.”

Fr Takuyamabwe said the MMD government was talking about the road that had been resurfaced, the high school that was being built in Mpulungu, as pointers to the development it had brought.

“If that is the development they are talking about but we need programmes that are pro-poor,” Fr Takuyamabwe said. “Programmes that trickle down to people and the community. We have got a lot of poverty in Mpulungu.”