NAREP president Elias Chipimo says should he be elected President, he will only serve one term because he does not want to be preoccupied by perpetrating his stay in office.

Speaking when he featured on Hot FM’s Frank on Hot programme, Chipimo said he would not waste time trying to protect his position if elected President.

“I continue to remind even my colleagues that we are our own waste enemies. Even if you were to say today that ‘Elias Chipimo you are the President today and I have all the powers that the current President has, it may be difficult for me to manage and control all the elements that will be doing bad things in my name. And even if I can, I will now be thinking to say ‘oh ok, if I touch this one, he might now do this’ and so I will be looking at protecting my own position which is why personally, I have made a statement to say if by God’s grace should I be elected president, I will only run one term. Why? Because I don’t want to be thinking about the nonsense that I need to have in place in order to be re-elected,” Chipimo said.

And Chipimo said alliances were essential in politics because they united people.

“We need to make it clear that in the last two elections, PF were only able to make it because they had an alliance. They just didn’t announce it publicly that we are working with and we are working through but certainly if you look at the cabinet today, some of them may have shifted to PF but they are really MMD. So really the majority known MMD that has enabled PF to go through. Look at the difference in numbers if the election results were to be believed but the difference in the numbers was so small between the PF and the UPND that had the PF not worked with the MMD, they would never had been in power. That is just the reality,” Chipimo said.

“So alliances are a reality of our current political landscape and we will continue to be a reality of our political landscape going forward and I think that’s a good thing because really nobody should go in there governing alone. The beauty of the alliance that we are trying to build is that it is diverse and it is trying to bring people from all corners of the country together. And it is trying to say ‘look, no matter what our differences, we can agree on fundamental things.”

Chipimo said leaders must not be preoccupied by being at the top, but must pave way for others to go first in order for alliances to succeed.

“Look we had entered into an alliance with Miles Sampa and Erick Chanda, that was a very big mistake and I am ready to admit that but I didn’t rush to say it has to be Elias Chipimo to lead it. I was happy to say that ‘look, this is about how we build the youth of the country, we give them hope’ [but] of course I didn’t understand some of the characters and individuals that I was going to be working with but I was ready to say ‘you go first’ and this is the attitude that we need to adopt before going to build a nation that can make everybody feel proud,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chipimo said President Edgar Lungu WOULD be running for a third term in disguise.

“It is a third term in disguise and without a doubt about it and no doubt that his spin doctors will try and present it as just the will of the people and the decision of the court and in accordance with the law. We have had that debate, the constitutional court ruled on that [but] I don’t believe it was the right decision but I do believe that the people will see it as a third term and that is really what it is,” said Chipimo.