In this audio, Rainbow Party General Secretary Wynter Kabimba says first Lady Esther Lungu should not compare the politics of Uganda to Zambia because there has never been a good rapport between that country’s ruling and opposition political parties.

Reacting to Esther’s remarks that she admired the good rapport between Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and opposition parliamentarians, Kabimba challenged the First Lady to explain which part of Uganda she had gone to.

“I don’t know which part of Uganda she went to because she should tell us whether or not Mr Kizza Besigye, the main opposition leader in Uganda is being accorded that freedom to interact with President Yoweri Museveni who was his best friend when they were fighting Idi Amin? She must tell us whether or not the people that have opposed Yowiri Museveni are today in parliament in his party. So I don’t know which part of Uganda she went to, I don’t know whether she saw how Besigye was being beaten up by the police and ended up in hospital following the last elections between Yoweri Museveni and the opposition leader Besigye. So am sure she is talking to Zambians who do not know what is going on in Uganda,” Kabimba said.

Kabimba said Michael Sata had already set a good example of how to work with the opposition.

“It is possible to have a good rapport between the opposition parliamentarians and the President, I mean Michael Sata showed us that we can have a good rapport between the opposition and the ruling party. We saw that example under Michael Sata, so we don’t have to borrow from Uganda, we can borrow from Michael’s era,” Kabimba said.

Asked about his views on what was sustaining the tension between the PF and UPND, Kabimba said it was an internal matter which he could not comment on.

“The current tension between PF and UPND is an internal matter between them. Us we don’t have a problem with UPND, neither do we have a problem with PF. The PF we have criticized them where they have gone wrong, we have told where their policies are not working. So we are playing our role as an opposition political party which you have followed our track record. We have not personalized issues, we have dealt with issues in an objective manner. Zambians are poor because the economic system that we have in Zambia is a wrong economic system. Even if you removed Lungu and put somebody else there, for as long as the economic system is capitalist, it would be the same. We changed from MMD to PF! It has not changed the lives of Zambians,” Kabimba explained.

Kabimba said Zambia had failed to uplift the lives of people because the economic system was poorly designed.

“So as far as we are concerned, the problem goes beyond the individual called the President, it goes to the roots of the economic system that every administration has tried to pursue in order to uplift our people from poverty, and it has failed because the system was not designed in that way,” said Kabimba.

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