Green party president Peter Sinkamba says Zambians have finally landed themselves in deep waters with a debt-dependent economy under the Patriotic Front, which can no longer be sustained.

And Sinkamba has warned that the country will continue being governed by jokers if voters continue electing politicians who come up with the best campaign songs.

In an interview with News Diggers, Sinkamba recalled that he had offered advise on how the country could turn around its economic fortunes by legalising cannabis, but his guidance was ignored.

“Our position on the country’s debt position has always been very clear since 2014 when we announced the cannabis agenda, the legalisation of cannabis. We made a case that looking at the way our debt contraction was, when at that time the total external debt was at USD$7.5 billion and the domestic debt was at USD$3.5 billion, making the two debts compounded to about USD$10 billion. We said if we did not think outside the box and be able to start generating revenue using other mainstreams, we were going to land in a very serious problem in a matter of years and we did make a projection that come 2016, our foreign debt portfolio was going to rise to about USD$9 billion then our domestic debt was going to be about USD$4 billion and we said we were going to reach somewhere around USD$13 billion compounded. We told the nation that looking at our GDP growth from 2005 when we were having a GDP of USD$8 billion at that time and looking at our GDP as at 2014 and our budget which at that time was about USD$7 billion per year, we said ‘we have no capacity to pay these debts based on current projections of revenue especially from the Mines’,” Sinkamba explained.

“We said ‘let’s think outside the box’ and we floated the idea to the nation as a green party. We said let’s get into another revenue generating venture which was medical cannabis production at the time. This was going to bring in USD$15 billion and that was going to have been almost twice what the total budget was for the nation. If we added the other portfolio on industrial cannabis for production of industrial products like pepper, oil, cosmetics and stuff like that, the total revenue projections which were verified by the London School of Economics, Harvard, we are talking about USD$36 billion. In fact, that was at the lower end, the actual amount we were going to have to have generated was going to be US$40 billion, which is about 10 per cent of the total business for cannabis around the globe, which is estimated at US$400 billion.”

He said it was unfortunate that citizens never pay attention when people provide solutions to economic problems and instead vote for best campaign songs.

“But then you the Zambians, you voters, you thought you were clever by just dancing and people giving you very nice songs and you are dancing, you thought we are mad us as the Green Party. Now we will see who is mad between us and you the voters who thought you were clever. You have now been trapped, you are in a corner! And believe you me, what I meant by a very serious high jump for the Zambians come 2021, this is what I meant,” said Sinkamba.

“And provided you are going to think like this, where you think Copper, Pay as You Earn, agriculture which is failing, you are going to continue thinking that money is going to be gotten by way of nkongole (credit) everyday, then you are in deep waters. And at the time we were discussing all these issues, your revenue in the reserves was about US$3.6 billion and thats US$7 billion GDP per annum. We are jokers! Serious jokers! And don’t cry, this is not time for complaining, it’s time for coming up with solutions that cab turn around the whole scenario and none of the political parties in this country have given you solutions like the Green Party has. So let’s see where you are going. 2021 is coming, if you are to think the same that’s okay. At least me I will be enjoying myself, I can make good money.”