Rainbow Party General Secretary Wynter Kabimba says it is too late for President Edgar Lungu to appease farmers.

Reacting to the Head of State’s decision to relook the K60 per 50kg bag of maize price in an interview today, Kabimba said the damage had already been done.

“There is no maize to buy! So that decision, populist as it may be, the peasant farmers have already lost. This is September and rains are six weeks away, there is no farmer that can keep maize because they don’t have storage facilities so the loss has already been made by them, they have already suffered a loss. It is too late in the day for that decision because farmers have already suffered the loss,” Kabimba said.

“They are approaching this issue not from an economical point of view but a political point of view. Because the economics of it is that there is no way a bag of 50kg maize can go for K60. That is ridiculous. Last year when it was K85, the economic price for a bag of maize was K150 and K160. They are still undercutting the peasant farmers.”

He said President Lungu must not act like a semi-god who runs the country based on what mood he has woken up in.

“Edgar Lungu is adopting this patriarch or attitude where he wants people to be pleading with him as the last person. He makes an unreasonable decision and then people should start to pleading with him when he knows what is supposed to be right and then he says I have listened and now I will do this, acting like a semi-god. That is not how to govern a country” Kabimba said.

“You can’t govern as if you are a chief. He is an elected president elected by the people of Zambia to do that which is right by the people. And the people should not be seeking favours from the President. You remember even last year that’s what he did, they put the price at K65 and then people went and pleaded with him and he said put it at K85. A country cannot be at the beck and call of one man called the President, that is the problem with Africa. If that is the decision that he made then let him tell us why he has changed his mind that this has now become about his personal feelings where everything depends on what mood he has woken up in and the dream that he has had at night, that is not how you must govern a country, it is very disappointing.”