Maravi

Milupi slams Rupiah’s performance in 2010

Milupi slams Rupiah’s performance in 2010
By Edwin Mbulo in Livingstone
Sun 02 Jan. 2011, 04:01 CAT

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda is arrogant and will abuse his power just to stay in office, says Charles Milupi. In an interview yesterday, Milupi, who is Alliance for Democracy and Development president, said Zambia had in 2010 continued to move backwards as President Banda and the MMD continued to be arrogant.

“President Rupiah Banda is arrogant and has continued to ignore the plight of the Zambian people. Just look at the sale of Zamtel (Zambia Telecommunications Company) and the repeal of the (Anti Corruption Commission) ACC Act’s abuse of office clause. Zambians have noted that he is arrogant,” Milupi said.

He said the MMD clearly removed that abuse of office clause despite people’s objections, so that the party could abuse offices.

He warned the MMD that the Act would be revisited after the elections so that all those that have abused office could account for their misdeeds.

Milupi said the frequent foreign presidential trips had yielded no tangible results apart from being a huge drain on the taxpayers’ money.

He said the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) which was ideally meant to balance the constitution and reduce presidential powers failed to achieve this as Vice-President George Kunda used the MMD’s arrogance to bulldoze the conference.

“The conference was supposed to look at the normative elements which were included in the Constitution of 1964. We needed to re-balance the constitution to reduce the President’s powers, but George Kunda made sure that with MMD majority, they bulldozed the conference. Their arrogance is all over, they control the police and the judiciary,” he said.

Milupi said Zambia lost the opportunity to raise state reserves with the arrogant refusal to re-introduction the windfall tax even when the price of copper had shot to a record US $9,400 mark per tonne.

“The MMD under president Mwanawasa made some reforms with the introduction of the minerals taxation Act which introduced the windfall tax, but with Rupiah’s arrogance, calls for the re-introduction of the windfall tax are falling on deaf ears,” he said.

Milupi noted that the country only raised US $371 million from the mines hence shifting the taxation burden onto the poor Zambian worker.

He said with the US $9,400 per tonne copper price at the end of last year, it was not difficult to calculate how much the nation was going to gain if windfall tax was in place.

He said the other lost opportunity under the MMD in 2010 was the cattle disease control programme and the maize growing policy.

“For me who comes from Luena, I know what gains have been lost from cattle due to the disease such as CBPP which has continued to ravage Southern and Western provinces. We also need to change government so that the agricultural policy can be restructured. The current one is just too costly,” he said.

“There is too much poverty and with the arrogance of MMD over the Barotseland Agreement, the MMD will have it tough here (Western Province). They have lost foot.”

Labels: CHARLES MILUPI, CORRUPTION, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 8:58 PM