UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema says Rainbow Party General Secretary Wynter Kabimba can rejoin the ruling party without talking crap about the largest opposition political party.

And Hichilema says he is not worried about the motion which the PF intend to take to parliament targeted at barring him from contesting the presidency again because the ruling party doesn’t have the numbers of it to pass.

Meanwhile, once in office, Hichilema says he will ensure that citizens are taxed fairly in order for them to save enough of their income for investments.

On Thursday, Kabimba charged that the UPND had abandoned its Chilanga member of parliament Keith Mukata.

“Now, if we are offering ourselves to be leaders of this country and can’t forgive a man who is in a helpless situation like Keith Mukata, we decide to abandon him, what type of leaders are we? And these are the same leaders that are patronising churches every weekend and yet they are not practicing what Jesus Christ said. It means even the patronising of churches is political, it has nothing to do with the change of heart…And this coming weekend we shall see some leaders of the UPND going to attend a church service somewhere. Not because they believe in Christ, but because they believe in the votes of the congregants. There is a lot of hypocrisy. There is a lot of making appearances wearing sheep skin. Keith Mukata needed his party yesterday (Wednesday) more than ever before, to comfort him and his family. Those of you that were with Keith in the party must have empathy,” said Kabimba on Hot FM’s Hot Seat.

But reacting to Kabimba’s attacks on Radio Phoenix’ Let the People Talk yesterday, Hichilema said it appeared the former wanted to rejoin the PF.

“Now I heard Kabimba on radio yesterday, I think he was on Hot FM, he talked a lot of crap about UPND not being sympathetic, not being what, he doesn’t even know what we have been trying to do, you can see the venom and I couldn’t understand, where is Wynter coming from? He is uninformed but he is going all out, and you can say maybe this guy wants to go back to PF but you can go back to PF without messing HH, without messing UPND,” Hichilema said.

He said he had sent out media statements to sympathize with Mukata and his family.

“Check on my Facebook, check in the media, it must be everywhere in the media where we basically issued a position to sympathize with Mukata, with his family and also that we are not judges in a matter of this nature because we have no ability to assess whether Mukata was truly guilty or not, that is for the court to decide. Ours is a humane responsibility that here is a member of parliament, who happens to be a member of parliament for the UPND and who found himself in those circumstances, we are not there to say whether he is guilty or not, we are offering him our strength, our support for him to be strong and carry on. Remember, I shared prison, I shared Chimbokaila with him, he found me in prison before I was transferred to Mukobeko and we were talking about these issues, strengthening each other, we continue on that route and we really ask the family to be strong, all of us to be strong and we also used the same opportunity to strengthen, to encourage the family members, all of us who lost that guard to be strong because life is life. No one should lose life under any circumstances and if we can protect life, we should protect life,” he said.

And Hichilema said he was not worried about the motion targeted at barring him from running for president again.

“They can bring what they want. That is a right. I am not worried. Why am I not worried? First, they have a right to start a motion, it is enshrined in our Constitution. If they succeed, well and good but they don’t have the numbers either. Why are they starting a motion when they don’t have the numbers? They are exercising their views and following the law. The numbers they don’t have. Let me explain to you, I said the Insurance Bill is simple majority, they have the numbers, the Constitutional amendment, which is what that fellow is trying to push, they don’t have the numbers because they need two thirds majority. But if they want to make a point and they want to go through that process, nobody should stand in their way so nobody should stand in our way as we represent the people of Zambia including those who are so afraid of saying anything against the PF thugs who are killing people and we are standing here ready to be killed on behalf of the people so that even if we are dead tomorrow, those who live after us will have a better country, a developing country, economy is growing, jobs will be there, lesser taxes including taxes which are coming now that media houses will be taxed through Topstar. If you are a TV station, you now have to pay a levy to Topstar to support the corruption, that deal between government and Topstar, now we have copay as citizens,” he said.

“The morality of any argument you push through parliament is equally important. The idea is to target Hakainde there, but it is the people to judge. The provision that was put in the law as you know is that somebody must not serve as President for more than two terms and the reason is simply that it is someone who is already President of the country, not president of an association or a party. We have the UPND constitution, it is very clear, it doesn’t say nothing on that but the reason they are saying that is Bec cause they are frightened of HH and the UPND leadership. We are not afraid of them and we will take the impeachment motion. We may even take the removal of immunity but we choose to take certain things one by one in order to open the eyes of citizens as to what is going on. The country is decaying.”

Meanwhile, HH promised fair taxes once elected into office.

“Our policy on tax is that we tax the citizens and companies to levels that are affordable given the operating environment, the cost of living taken into account, the cost of doing business so we will look at the whole array of taxes, indirect taxes, levies, put those together and then because our policy is to tax citizens only to affordable levels, then we will be able to remix the whole tax regime, to pick Pay As You Earn alone is not the way to look at the tax sector. We need to ensure that we look at the totality of the taxes, try and clean up what is called tax on tax, which is what the PF is doing, and levies on levies. Our approach is to tax citizens what is called a fair tax, lower tax. The idea is to allow citizens to have savings from their savings be it a company, be it an individual and when they have savings, then as the UPND we will encourage them to invest even in. building your own home so that you can move away from a rented home and save money,” said Hichilema.

“That is our approach, to encourage people to invest in agriculture and other areas so that even a marketeer, when they are going to the market, we look at their capital levels and what they need for them to be in the market. Levies are too many in the market, charges on taxi drivers are too many, our policies will be to give taxi drivers and marketeers enough income to be able to take care of their needs and save a little bit more. Even this 10 per cent withholding tax on rent, we are going to review, what other income to citizens have? They are not employed, so if the little house which a widow has which her husband left and she is charging K2,000 rent, she moves to a smaller house and pays K500, we know her only income is k1,500, that’s not enough. Should we apply a 10 per cent withholding tax? We will say no to that category of people. Ultimately, fair tax, leave reasonable amounts of money in the hands of the owners, at lest 70 per cent overall when you have netted our taxes and levies, then you will see more investments from citizens, you will see economic growth not at seven per cent, but at 10 per cent. When you do that, you will have jobs, you will be able to keep children in school and proper medical heath care.”