VETERAN politician Sikota Wina says the next five years will be closely monitored to see whether the pledges made by President Hakainde Hichilema in his inaugural speech will be actualised.

And Wina says he is impressed with former president Edgar Lungu’s decision to peacefully surrender the instruments of power to President Hichilema.

In an interview, Wednesday, Wina said he expected openness from President Hichilema.

“It is the will of the people, I think his (Edgar Lungu’s) mind must have run over his five years of governance, the money dished out to all his people and so forth. He spent quite a lot of money trying to improve this and that but it seems that it did not work in his favour. The people have spoken and let this not be the last time that the people have spoken and we as leaders must always obey the will of the people,” he said.

“I think this is an important message to Hakainde Hichilema as he said ‘we are just servants of the people, we are not their masters’. I expect openness on his part and so forth. We will watch the next five years very closely because what they say on inauguration day is not necessarily what they follow. So we are going to be monitoring that very closely.”

And Wina described Lungu’s move to hand over the instruments of power peacefully as impressive.

“Don’t forget that this is not the first time this is happening in Zambia, this is not the first time to hand over power. It happened during Kaunda’s days. There were so many incidents where power was handed over. I think that was impressive for Lungu to go out in front of that huge crowd and surrender to Hakainde Hichilema. Africa is not used to those things,” said Wina.

“Africa is used to the Military taking over the state, this and that, we have got a very bad history. Things like that (peaceful transition of power) are very rare and that’s why everybody is happy and jovial about it. It’s like we have just come out of a period where our government here was not decided by us, but decided by the colonial powers who are going to rule us next and so forth. Which is a terrible, terrible history. So this is a new chapter.”