Defend your votes - Sata

Defend your votes - Sata
By George Chellah in Serenje
Sun 18 Sep. 2011, 13:55 CAT

MICHAEL Sata has urged Zambians to defend their votes this week by remaining at the polling stations after casting their ballots. And Sata called on voters to be alert and physically inspect any suspicious-looking persons found at polling stations.

Addressing a public rally on Friday, Sata who is on a campaign trail of Central Province, advised the crowd to be observant of the MMD's scheme to rig the elections.

"…because there are elections, they have brought you sugar, they have brought you cooking oil. And starting from tomorrow they are going to have pre-marked ballot papers, they will give you K600,000 and give you pre-marked ballot paper. Get the K600,000 and get your own paper but mark pabwato," Sata said.

"After voting remain at the polling stations. When you are outside any person who is going in with a chi big fat handbag or dustcoat check him and you polling agents don't let the boxes go alone."

He also warned intelligence officers not to be used against their own people.
"My warning to intelligence officers… you want to cheat your own people but you are forgetting that you also need to liberate yourselves," Sata said.

"Today, we don't know where to go, we are orphans. People are very annoyed, you should also be annoyed."

He told the people to dismiss Vice-President George Kunda's propaganda against him.

Sata said there was no way he could advocate same sex marriage because he was a Christian. He said his wife hails from Serenje.

He said the MMD government had failed to deliver.

"This is a government of thieves; a government of corrupt people. The money we are spending maintaining George Kunda we can look after these policemen. This government they are like a chicken without a head," he said.

He also promised to revise conditions of service in the defence and security forces.
"Officers in the defence and security forces want to occupy higher offices one day. But if you go and take retired officers you make them to command the police, the army and to command the Air force, where will these junior officers go?" he asked.

He said the civil service should not be politicised.

"We don't want district commissioners to be MMD cadres," he said.

He said conditions of service for civil servants in rural areas also needed to be improved to attract qualified personnel in these areas.

He said instead of developing Serenje and Mkushi, Vice-President Kunda and his children where the only ones benefitting from the minerals in the two districts.

Earlier during a public rally in Vice-President Kunda's Muchinga Constituency, Sata said not only had the Vice-President and the President reduced the fertiliser allocation, but they had also failed to buy maize from farmers after the harvest.

He said Vice-President Kunda was fooling the people in his constituency by bringing graders to do roads at election time.

"He has been here for five years didn't he see that these roads are bad? Now today this is when he is bringing this dust here. He thinks you are children," he said.
Sata said Muchinga needed to have four secondary schools.
"…each chiefdom needs to have a secondary school. You have an MP who is a Vice-President but he has a manganese mine in Mkushi and here he is not buying your maize," he said.

He urged people to liberate themselves just like they did in 1964.

"46 years of independence, children are still carrying water on their heads. Tell George Kunda and Rupiah Banda; Chimbokaila is waiting for them," he said.

And addressing another public rally in Mkushi South, Sata advised the people to mockingly remind the MMD candidate Sydney Chisanga of his failures during the last five years he served as member of parliament.

"They have neglected you and you are like orphans. You are being betrayed by your own representatives. You are not the only ones suffering; the police officers are equally lonely because they are neglected. They have no proper houses and their houses have no water," Sata said.

He urged the PF candidates to highlight the problems the people of Mkushi North and Mkushi South were facing once elected next week.

"You need to tell the government that there are no secondary schools in Mkushi and that fertiliser is not enough. Mwanawasa gave you fertiliser but Rupiah Banda has reduced," Sata said.

"We will increase the fertiliser allocation and we will be distributing the farming inputs and buying the produce through village headmen."

He advised the PF candidates in Mkushi to tirelessly work for the people.

"Work for the people and God will reward you; if you work for your pockets you will burn in hell. If you don't cheat people and you are telling them the truth, God will help you," he said.

Sata told the crowd to ask the MMD candidate for Mkushi South to account for the K600 million Constituency Development Fund.