People’s Alliance for Change (PAC) president Andyford Banda has charged that the Patriotic Front (PF) are clashing with his party to manipulate the electorate into thinking that they have already won the elections.

And Banda says his party has gained momentum, becoming favourites to win the forth-coming Lusaka mayoral election slated for July 26.

Banda told News Diggers! in an interview that the PF had deliberately ignored the stakeholders’ time-table, agreed in collaboration with the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), on holding rallies.

“So, what happened is that, last week on Friday, a group of stakeholders from all political parties, including ECZ, the police and other stakeholders sat at the [Lusaka] Civic Centre to come up with a schedule that was supposed to be followed by all political parties. And that schedule was signed by all stakeholders. I hold the schedule in front of me right now and I can see that, PF was represented by a guy called Stanford Sikayume who signed on their behalf,” Banda said.

“But what happened was that on Saturday, when we were supposed to be in Chawama, they went there to do a road show in Chawama. They had followed the schedule after that, after we alerted them because it’s like they didn’t know that there was this schedule. But again, today [Thursday] they have gone to Matero where we were supposed to be! And they know they were not supposed to be there. So, they have been showing some levels of arrogance and disregard for the law and laid-down agreement for all stakeholders who are participating in this election. So, I don’t know what kind of illegality this is because this was already agreed and signed up. It’s typical of the PF, this is what they are doing in all other sectors. They are disregarding the law and on top of it, even yesterday [Wednesday], we were in Kanyama, and we were told that this side of the area the PF are there’.”

And Banda insisted that PAC had gained momentum and are the favourites to win the forth-coming mayoral elections.

“And they have noted that PAC has the momentum, our candidate Mundia Mukubesa has the momentum. I have seen a number of young people getting activated and a number of young people being energised. They are campaigning on their own. They are doing things on the ground without us telling them. Yesterday [Wednesday] they were in Kanyama, who doesn’t know that Petersen is standing? As we were doing our road show even some kids were singing ‘Mundia Mukubesa’, ‘Mundia Mukebesa.’ What that simply means is that the message is on the ground, if children can actually sign that song, it means everyone is talking everywhere and that was deep in Kanyama where we were,” said Banda.

“The beautiful thing about this election is that the people who are most frustrated are the people who support the PF. Because we have people from the PF who are supporting us in the background. The thing is that a lot of people were not happy with the selection of the mayoral candidate. And they are saying we can’t continue supporting a cause that does not make sense. And the picking of their candidate [Miles Sampa] has actually made people realise that PF is losing grip by the day.”