With twenty five days remaining to Thursday 12th August 2021 polls, scores of Chipata residents remain convinced that voting for President Edgar Chagwa Lungu and Patriotic Front (PF) is suicidal as such a decision will entrench perpertual suffering at household and national level.
And United Party for National Development (UPND) Alliance partners have regretted that the sufferings being experienced by a majority of Zambians is not punishment from God but self-made vulnerability caused by President Lungu and the PF leadership.
A sobbing Ms. Beatrice Banda attributed the high cost of living and indiscriminate loadshedding, lack of access to clean and safe drinking water to incapacity on the part of the PF to make life better for Citizens.
“Here in Chipata, a stone throw away from the Central Business District, there is no water and load shedding is on a daily basis. Just look at how deplorable our houses are. We have had the leadership of PF here for a decade (10 years) since 2011, with no meaningful progress and improvement of the environment. These duty bearers do not even come to visit us but we only hear that President Edgar Chagwa Lungu came here to inspect developmental projects, which are not here,” protested Ms. Banda.
This lamention came to light when the UPND Alliance presidents Nason Msoni and Kaluba Simuyemba interacted with the Chipata residents and spelt out the UPND Alliance manifesto is grounded as its leader Hakainde Hichilema seeks office as Zambia’s Seventh (7) Republican President.
And Movement for Change and Equity (M4CE) President Mr. Simuyemba urged the electorate in the Eastern Province and Zambia as a whole to interrogate politicians promisibg them impossibilities, in an apparent referrence to Patriotic Front 10-year failure to put more money in the citizens pockets, lowering taxes and creating more jobs.
“Without asking a politician how he or she is going to deliver a campaign message is a total mess. Let us all just recall how PF excited you with ‘Donchi Kubeba’ song and the campaign promises of more money, more jobs and lower taxes being an elusive possibility.
“They have built hospitals and clinics with no medicine, no medical personnel; doctors and nurses. The road network is not durable, cuppled with huge money spent from debt, and we are still in debt,” Mr Simuyemba complained.
It was at this point that, Agatha Phiri and Sydney Chanda objected questioning what the UPND Alliance team will do for them once elected in three weeks and four days, a position Simuyemba countered.
“UPND Alliance under the leadership of President Hichilema, who acquired his resources without stealing has an objective leadership to redeem all Zambians from economic segregation, as articulated in the partners manifesto, which has since been translated into local languages. l know that you are all peasant farmers here and that eighty percent of the population in Zambia are farmers, we are going to supply required number of inputs and lower the cost of doing business,” assured Simuyemba, an agriculturalist by profession.
And Mr. Msoni encouraged residents in Chipata and Zambia as a whole to protect votes for Hakainde Hichilema and all UPND Alliance aspirants at Parliamentary and Local Government level..
“Give us time to revamp the economy and make you valuable as a people created in the image of God. The road infrastructure development which PF boast about is marred with corruption and lack of fiscal discipline, which has costed all of us to living a miserable life.
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UPND Alliance in government will enforce zero tolerance to corruption, that is why our candidates once voted into office will support and enact stiffer laws on corruption,” Mr Msoni, an All People’s Congress (APC) leader pledged.