PF media director Sunday Chanda says President Edgar Lungu fired Roan member of parliament Chishimba Kambwili because he had ceased to be a loyal member of the ruling party.

And Chanda says the PF does not take Kambwili’s apology to President Edgar Lungu and Presidential Affairs Minister Freedom Sikazwe seriously because it is fake and is meant to attract attention from the Head of State.

On July 22, 2017, the PF central committee expelled Kambwili and the now NDC Secretary General Mwenya Musenge from the party, following an extraordinary meeting chaired by President Lungu in which it was agreed that the two be expelled for disobeying party orders.

But since his expulsion, Kambwili has taken on the PF government with criticism targeting the President and top government officials, and has also challenged his expulsion from he party in court, calling it illegal.

At a press briefing last week Kambwili said he was asking for forgiveness from President Affairs Minister Freedom Sikazwe and President Edgar Lungu because he did not know why the Head of State fired him and expelled him from the party.

But commenting on Kambwili’s failure to accept his expulsion, Chanda explained that the reason why the former Information Minister had been expelled from the party was because he was not a loyal member.

“If he wonders why he was expelled from the Patriotic Front, he was expelled from the party because he has never been loyal to anything. He was not loyal to the Patriotic Front, he was not loyal to his own words and a man who is not loyal to his own words cannot be loyal to anything. Honourable Kambwili doesn’t see anything wrong in the things that he does and the attacks that he makes on individuals and the Patriotic Front. To him he has the preserve to insult anybody else expect himself. He has the preserve to call anybody names and any organisation names expect himself. And we again say to honourable Kambwili that he is now pronounced as a member of the NDC. On that score, we want to challenge him to go and withdraw that case [of his expulsion] in nourt. Let him go and withdraw that court case so that we can go and taste his medicine in Roan. We can put his popularity to taste,” Chanda said.

And commenting on Kambwili’s apology to the President and his Presidential Affairs Minister, Chanda said the Roan lawmaker’s apology was fake.

“We read about Mr Kambwili’s supposed apology and our take is that firstly, honourable Kambwili is a time waster. He’s craving for attention but unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to solicit that attention. He thinks that when he insults President Lungu then he will attract the attention of the Patriotic Front and President Lungu to reach out to him and probably and start engaging [in] some peace talks. But he knows that more he insults, the more he alienates himself. So for us, our focus is developing and delivering on the promises that we made to the Zambian people. He’s busy insinuating that other people are witch doctors but if someone looked at him… anyway we don’t want to get into those politics of the race to the bottom with honourable Kamwbili. Remember when he made those toilet paper remarks about the Deputy Secretary General of the Patriotic Front? That is honourable Kambwili, he is a chatter box. And it’s very sad that we have such calibre of people aspiring for public office in this land,” Chanda said.

“So honourable Kambwili is a flip flopper. He says one thing in one breath and says another thing in another breath and clearly, those are attributes of a prank master. He enjoys playing to the gallery and we wonder why he expects people to take him seriously when he cannot take himself seriously. So when we look at his apology, that apology is fake and it’s a man crying out for attention. We have said to honourable Kambwili that owing to his inconsistencies and flip flopping, clearly this is a man who has a serious problem with his own sense of judgment. And we have advised him that he must consider checking himself in into some facility. If he does not want to do that, Parliament is full of medical Doctors who are his comrades, they could be of great service to him and render a professional opinion to him because a man who says ‘this colour is white’ today but calls it black after 30 minutes is a man who is suffering from impaired judgment and there is very little that we can do in that regard to help him. Our own judgment is that honourable Kambwili deserves more sympathy than anger because he is a victim of his own creation.”

Chanda further argued that Kambwili was incapable of sustaining an ideological argument due to his capacity issues.

“Kambwili wrongly believed that he was this national oracle but truth dawned after his expulsion that he is nothing but a loud and foul mouthed politician with little substance if any. We saw him address that press briefing in pair of shorts which warranted viewer discretion but again he has no problems with expose’ as past incidences have shown. He does not mind exposing himself including his ignorance and arrogance. He is a puffed-up self who believes it can only be him and nobody else. The truth is that Kambwili is a serious indictment of the state of our national politics in 2018. He is a reckless politician thriving in insults and demeaning language against others in Parliament and outside Parliament. Kambwili is unfortunately an embodiment of politics of cheap populism and that makes him the high priest of political theatre. We sympathise with him because he is associated with more lies, inconsistencies and double talk than any other politician,” said Chanda.