UPND spokesperson Charles Kakoma says his party has demonstrated that it is the most democratic party in the country and the onus was now on PF to emulate them.

Reacting to PF’s remarks that the UPND general conference was a sham in an interview, Kakoma said the ruling party was bitter because the UPND did not show any ounce of confusion and infighting during the elective process.

“This was not an academic exercise. We have some people who are in National Management Committee who are scoring low votes and if they don’t get higher votes, they will drop off. So, they will lose an election. It is now the PF to demonstrate that there is democracy in their political party because for now, we know it is not there. For them, when someone announces that he wants to challenge Edgar Lungu, that is treason, people such as KBF (Kelvin Bwalya Fube), he has ended up being expelled from the party just because he wants to challenge Edgar Lungu. But for us we have not expelled anybody, we have been as democratic as possible. And lucky enough for us, nobody wanted to even challenge Hakainde Hichilema. He was the only one who filed to contest on that position and nobody was stopped from filing in, no one was harassed. And this is what has infuriated the Patriotic Front. They are bitter with us because no one has challenged HH. Why are they upset? They wanted to take advantage of any misunderstanding or any confusion. Unfortunately, there was no confusion and the PF are upset. It’s like me, if I contest a parliamentary seat and no one intends to challenge me, I will gladly go unopposed, why would you be upset? But they are upset with how we have done this,” said Kakoma.

“They expected that people would challenge each other so much and have in-fighting and some confusion so that they have something to talk about. It’s over to them now, the onus is on them. Let them demonstrate without fighting each other that they can conduct intra-party elections and that Edgar Lungu can be challenged. So these elections were just about electing members of the National Management Committee. So, from there, from the people who have been elected, the President can choose to appoint who can be the Secretary general. It is just like the normal election, like the parliamentary elections. When an MP is elected, he goes to parliament but from there, it is up to the President to elect his cabinet with the people who have been elected. This is how it works here, so when you are elected to the National Management Committee, it’s not automatic that you will be appointed to a position. So, this committee might be the same or it might change depending on what the president prefers.”