NATIONAL Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on Livestock Minister Professor Nkandu Luo and her colleagues to apologize for castigating the pastoral letter issued by the Catholic Bishops.
And Kambwili says leader has accused the Electoral Commission of Zambia of protecting the interests of the ruling Patriotic Front and President Edgar Lungu by suggesting a hike in nomination fees.
Speaking at an Opposition Alliance briefing, Thursday, Kambwili said what Prof Luo and her colleagues did was an abomination.
“Given Lubinda, Jean Kapata, Nkandu Luo and others surely you go and start castigating a pastoral letter of your own church for the purpose of keeping political power? What a shame! The Catholic Church has been guiding its flock through pastoral letters and this has been done since time immemorial. I have never seen a reasonable Catholic who goes in an anthill, who goes for a press briefing to castigate a pastoral letter? If you have anything against what the Catholic bishops engage them privately what you did was an abomination to the Catholic faith. But please go and apologize to the bishops. You are drunk with money and God will punish you. Let me tell you PF, you play with Catholic bishops, you are in trouble,” Kambwili warned.
And Kambwili insisted that the ECZ nomination fees were too high.
“The Average earning of a civil servant, the majority of civil servants, is about K5,000. For a civil servant to save K25,000 it means his children will not go to school for five months he should get a K5,000 gross without any deductions. Is that fair? Why do you want to exclude the poor people from becoming presidents? It clearly shows that when you steal too much, when you become so corrupt and you make so much money you think that everybody has money,” he said
Kambwili also asked ECZ to provide a longer time for voter registration, saying a 30-day period would leave room for manipulation by the ruling party.
“Every year when there is registration of voters, this has never been done in a period of one month. We are talking of capturing 9 million voters, now tell me what system are you going to use that will enable you capture all voters within a period of 30 days? What system are you going to use? For us in the alliance, we believe that this is one way try to de-franchise the people of Zambia from voting,” said Kambwili.
“We are not going to sit and watch we are calling upon those in government to serious consider calling for an indaba that should involve ECZ, political parties, the church, civil society and any interested Zambian citizens so that we can come and agree on the way forward as far as the voter registration is concerned. And how the resources are going to be shared because we are reliably informed that the one month period they have given, there is a plan to say if they go to Southern Province, they are going to announce that we don’t have enough material, give them only about 15 days to do the registration of voters and give the areas where PF is popular more days so that they can capture more people.”
2 Responses
All those who refused to be part of the FORUM TO COIN THE AMENDMENTS should also apologise to the Zambians for misleading and misrepresentating them or simply denying representing them in matters of constitution making when they refused to part of it.
It’s like at a wedding ceremony, the minister asks the people, “Who doesn’t want that these two be married? Please rise up and say so now or forever remain silent.” The minister pauses…….. Nobody rises up and the women shout for joy ….. It is immoral for anyone who did not take up the challenge to start castigating the newly wed when they had a chance to stop the marriage before dowry and other things were given out to the bride’s family.
So in short. All those opposition political parties, LAZ, Civil Society organisations that saw it fit to refuse to represent to the Zambians must shut their mouths up as they did when they refused to represent Zambians. Zambia is not Zambia when A, B, C, D, E and F are part of the meeting or consultative Council. Zambia is Zambia when common Zambians are part of the meeting and it ends their.
The people who saw it fit to represent Zambians made something that has been refined as BILL 10 and it is in Parliament enroute to enactment into law to amend the constitution. The deputy minister thing is not there and those who lose in a presidential election there is a proposal to increase the pertition time from 14 days upwards. Period.
These wicked civil society organisations and the UPND in particular refused the people of Zambia a chance to enjoy their rights when in 2016 they maliciously campaigned against the BILL OF RIGHTS in a referendum alongside the general elections slinging mud on the PF that if the people voted YES to the referendum issue they would be voting YES to allowing homosexuality in Zambia. Fine they swayed the people and today the same people are crying about police excessive power, freedom of information and so on. Hypocrites!!!!!
I think your reasoning is of a unstable person have you understood how this mediocre bill came about for you to criticize those that are against even an educated person will disagree if explained to how came about and it’s as simple as a reconciliation turns out to be an amendment of the constitution after discrediting the reason for reconciliation and the efforts of the same organisation who wanted a reconciliation of peace respect of the law so the championing of bill10 is of lost cause my dear