Patriotic Front Secretary General Davies Mwila says the party has picked Maria Langa as it’s candidate ahead of the Chilanga parliamentary by-election.

And by press time yesterday, the UPND central committee was still locked up in interviews with the 10 shortlisted applicants, among them Keith Mukata’s girlfriend Charmaine Musonda.

Briefing the press at the PF secretariat, Sunday, Mwila boasted that having scooped 12 out of 16 local government by-elections last week, the ruling party was confident that the Chilanga election would be a walk over.

“All of us are aware that the Electoral Commission of Zambia announced that we are going to have elections on 6th June and nominations shall be held on Thursday, which will be 3rd of May. So the Central Committee of the Patriotic Front deliberated on the candidates that had applied, we had 10 applicants for Chilanga and yesterday we arrived at one person who will be our official candidate. I want to say that we are coming from another by-election where we had 16 local government by-elections where we had scooped 12 and the indications are that the party is doing extremely well and we expect to win the coming six local government by-elections, that is in Northern Province two, Luapula two and Eastern Province two,” Mwila said.

“The team that we have picked as a party will deliver the seat without any difficulties. As a party we are ready for this election and I want to assure that nation that come 6th June, we will carry the day. Our campaign will be based on issues, we want to tell the people of Chilanga what we want to do for them because Chilanga residents want development, not any other thing. And we don’t expect violence from our cadres or our officials, we have made it very clear, we don’t want violence in Chilanga. We want these elections to be free and fair without any harassment or any victimization. So we are geared, come 3rd May, all of us will accompany our candidate for nominations and our candidate, we have picked a woman by the name of Maria Langa. Maria Langa is a resident of Chilanga, she stood as council chairperson in Chilanga, she did extremely well, we think that as a party, we are going to emerge victorious with our candidate Maria Langa. That is our official candidate and we expect all those who applied to support our official candidate.”

He said Lands Minister Jean Kapata has been appointed campaign manager for the Chilanga by-election.

“And I want to mention that from the six local government by-elections, UPND, they had three seats and our seats are three and we expect to get all of them on 6th June. So the people that will manage the campaign in Chilanga are honorable Jean Kapata, our chairperson for women who is Minister of Lands and member of parliament for Mandevu will be the campaign manager for Chilanga by-election. The deputy campaign managers will be two, honorable Minister for Copperbelt honorable Japhen Mwakalombe, MP for Chongwe and our mayor for Chongwe, Mr Geoffrey Chumbwe. So we have two deputy campaign managers,” said Mwila.