Home Affairs Minister Stephen Kampyongo says Chishimba Kambwili is a pathological liar who is shamelessly using the same media house he closed down to spread falsehoods.

And Kampyongo says it is mischievous to blame the PF for embracing MMD members because Michael Sata also used to be a senior member of the former ruling party.

Kampyongo, who is also PF National Youth Chairman, was speaking when he feature on Hot FM’s Hot Seat programme today.

“Ordinarily I would have avoided talking about him as an individual but because of the fact that now he showing the whole nation that he has become a pathological liar, that’s what I can call him. I saw him sitting at Muvi TV and you see that’s how you start judging people on their inconsistencies and thinking, ‘not too long ago that’s the same thing he was closing and today that’s where you are running to go and tell lies’. So the decision of the Central Committee was collective and when he says that there was a spirit of reconciliation which was to be tabled and it wasn’t there, for heaven’s sake! The first thing that he brought out himself was the issues of party confusions on the Copperbelt,” Kampyongo said.

“He went ballistic, he was accusing the Provincial leadership of being failures then again one of the accusations he was facing was that he was not respecting structures of the party so he further went on to say he doesn’t recognise the district structure of Luanshya, the constituency of Roan, what he has done is to start making cooperatives, that was his presentation. And what prompted me to react as National Youth Chairman was his continuous abuse and disrespect of my provincial youth chairman Nathan Chanda who he has continued to call a boy and he describes him in so many ways because him he is waxing so much fat which he has accumulated so he thinks my youth Chairman is a nobody.”

Kampyongo said the only crime Chanda, who is also Luanshya Mayor, had committed was attempting to stand as Member of Parliament for Roan Constituency in the last election.

“So he continued issuing disrespectful remarks just as he did prior to the adoption of this young man who had also expressed interest to stand Roan. I was tasked to talk to him to stand down out of respect and I said this man is our elder brother give him chance to stand then you can go for the other slot which was for the Mayor [and] the young man understood. If he didn’t, probably what happened in Chimwemwe could have happened in Roan Constituency, now why should he continue calling him a boy and insulting his parents? So as National Youth Chairman I refused to say I was not going to accept and I won’t accept that even going forward because the young man is a leader respected by people and he was elected by the people with more than 25,000 votes,” he said.

Kampyongo insisted expelling Kabwili from PF was the right thing to do.

“So that’s where he [Kambwili] now wants to single me out because of that young man [Nathan Chanda] whom he refused to campaign for as Mayor, he opted to campaign for an independent. There are certain things that I can’t go into because they are not for now but what I can tell you is that my dear brother Chishimba Kambwili is free to go and now realize his Presidential ambitions, it’s his democratic right but to destabilize the party to say let me fight within and you start forming cooperatives where there are branches and wards, that’s anarchy and we didn’t want to experience what we experienced in the past. So for me, it was the right thing to do for the party so that we can stabilize and we have lost big people before,” he said.

And Kampyongo said it was mischievous to blame the PF for embracing MMD members because Sata also came from the same party.

“There is nothing like that at all and you know, we are a big family and we embrace ourselves very well. But did Mr Sata form the party just for founder members in order to form government? No he knew he wouldn’t form government with that small clique of people that’s why he grew the party. And to condemn Mr Edgar Lungu for appointing people from MMD is being mischievous because President Sata was also a senior member of MMD for a long time and Secretary General. When he formed PF he also expected to get members from MMD and if you remember in 2011 after elections, he appointed more than 10 deputy Ministers from MMD, so why didn’t they resign then to protest that you are bringing people from the MMD?” Kampyongo wondered.

Meanwhile, Kampyongo said PF members with ambitions were free to challenge President Lungu at the general conference in 2020.

“What the Central Committee was just saying is that we are still confident, we appreciate the leadership of Mr Chagwa Lungu and all we decided to do was just to express confidence and desire to say that our current leader continues as President and he is within the constitution that permits for two terms. So there is nothing that the Central committee has done wrong. In any case we have not said a sole candidate, we have further gone to say and I am sure you must have heard even my colleague Frank Bwalya laboring this point that for us this is what we have said but any other member of the party who wishes to come and also compete is free to contest at the convention because that decision is an expression of desire for the party to say that we feel that the man is still steering the ship properly,” said Kampyongo.