CHIRUNDU UPND member of parliament Douglas Syakalima says it is illogical for PF media director Sunday Chanda to call Hakainde Hichilema an angel of death simply because he holds the ruling party to account.
Last week, Chanda said Hichilema was an angel of death who shouldn’t portray himself as an angel of light in response to the UPND leader’s remarks that PF was a terrorist organization.
But reacting to Chanda’s remarks in an interview, Syakalima said it was clear for everyone to see that PF was terrorizing Zambians in every sense and it was therefore illogical for Chanda to defend his party.
“What Sunday Chanda is saying is very unfair; it’s illogical and does not make sense. Remember, HH had said ‘PF is a terrorist organisation’. But Sunday Chanda is trying to put it otherwise to make it look like it is actually UPND that are violent, how dare he accuse HH of being an angel of death? I insist that PF is a terrorist organization and they are reigning terror on anybody they think is an opponent, including the media. They have just been caught pants down now that everybody has condemned their behaviour of terrorizing the opposition and now they have gone for anything such that even if a stone became an opponent, they would crash it,” Syakalima said.
“PF is a group of people who have killed, they have maimed people and Sunday Chanda cannot turn around today like a spin doctor with the little English that he learnt yesterday. You can’t start behaving like you have the monopoly of intelligence; this is how he has been behaving, he’s so arrogant, what comes out of his mouth is filthy.”
Syakalima said Chanda did not think straight.
“He wants us to forget that just recently, he was in MMD where he failed an election. When PF took over, he jumped and joined them. So he’s a boy who has no principles at all! That language he uses just shows you that he has no brains at all. And he cannot start comparing to say ‘look the UPND were violent here’, let him read the Commission of Inquiry into electoral violence [report] and he will see who is violent because his [Minister of Home Affairs Stephen] Kampyongo has been mentioned in that report. So who is more violent?” Syakalima asked.
“Somewhere in your story, he says HH was not even in the studio at the time of the attack so he was not injured, wow! Do you see that kind of shallow thinking? Any harm on any Zambian is harm on everybody. People were knifed in Isoka and Sunday doesn’t want HH to complain about that because he was not the one was harmed. So you can see that the boy does not think straight.”
Syakalima said PF deputy national mobilization chairperson Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba had worsened violence in the ruling party.
“When GBM was in UPND and he was quoted saying ‘Panga for Panga’ in the newspapers, PF said all sorts of things. Of course GBM meant to ask people to defend themselves when attacked. But PF condemned him, they condemned our party. Today he has joined them and have they tutored him? No, and violence has just increased there. So their violence plus GBM’s violence equals terrorism. That is what that combination is called. Can’t you remember even the violence that characterized the 2016 elections? Why does PF behave like this? PF should know that no amount of saying a lot of bad things about the opposition will help them, these people have destroyed our economy, they have destroyed society, they have actually destroyed all institutions of the state and they must go! No amount of turning around and spinning will help them in 2021,” said Syakalima.
“At least for my president, HH, his license of practicing business has never been grabbed by anybody because he has never done anything to his clients. Let Sunday Chanda tell me what he would have called it when his President chewed a client’s money and was suspended for close to a year from LAZ. How would he call that? How would he call his President at Mulungushi Rock of Authority where there was no voting apart from pangas? Everybody saw that. Does he want us to bring the videos so that we start asking people who among us is nearer to Boko Haraam? Because it is clear that it can only obviously be PF.”