Hakainde Hichilema is not the solution to this country because he’s under siege the same people who are in government and he doesn’t know where he’s going, says UPP leader Saviour Chishimba.

And Chishimba says he has not conceded defeat in the just-ended payoral by-elections, which saw PF candidate Miles Sampa claim victory, saying the electoral process was “fraudulent”.

Speaking when he featured on Prime Television’s Oxygen of Democracy programme, Monday evening, Chishimba claimed that the UPND president’s confidants were misleading him when it came to giving statements and adopting candidates because they were working with the ruling party.

“Somebody is saying that I should become MP today in UPND, I cannot join UPND! I can’t sit on the same table with all those looters who have gone to regroup themselves there. Even Hakainde is already under siege! Hakainde is not the solution to this country. He’s under siege by the same people who said they are in government to eat. Look at him, he doesn’t know. Hakainde doesn’t even know where he’s going, in places where UPND won, PF is taking over because these people, they love money, they are on the payroll of PF! In fact, if Hakainde wants, I can give him a list with evidence of all those who are on the payroll of PF. They are misleading him when it comes to adoptions; they are misleading him when it comes to political statements. Hakainde is now coming out as a very raw politician, he doesn’t know what he’s doing I can assure you. That’s what looters do; they are on the payroll this side as long as their pockets are full. They don’t care about the political groupings that they belong to,” Chishimba argued.

And asked if he accepted his loss in the outcome of last Thursday’s Mayoral by-election, Chishimba insisted he could not accept something that was “fraudulent” and that every one of the losing candidates who had accepted defeat was part of the fraud.

“I don’t accept anything to do with fraud. So, even all those who are conceding to fraud, it means that they are accomplices. Anyone conceding defeat under a system, which is fraudulent is an accomplice, and we [in the UPP] are not accomplices. I didn’t even look at what number I came out; the moment I saw what was happening I didn’t look at that. Because the ones who were allocating it were PF, so the PF was first, then UPND… they were deciding how to allocate and they thought that they could frustrate me. You cannot frustrate me! You are too small. How can a looter frustrate me? Even Petersen, Imboela, I think I was like number five (actually sixth position with 689 votes) whatever. But those were tricks, these people are jokers! A looter cannot just frustrate me, you don’t know what I am made of,” Chishimba bragged.

“I want to thank the people of Lusaka because I know how they voted before the PF decided to allocate the votes in accordance to what was going to best suit their agenda of advancing their pockets and not the pockets of Lusaka and Zambia at large. Now, let me say this fellow citizens, that when it comes to the building of a nation, there comes a time that patriotism must be the cornerstone of all decisions that are made. I don’t hate President Edgar Chagwa Lungu, for instance, I don’t hate him. This is somebody I ate with, and drunk with in Chawama, not one time, but many times. The only difference is that I am the one who was buying; he never bought me anything because he was facing some challenges that time. And the Edgar Lungu I am seeing this time is not the Edgar Lungu that I knew and I can assure that our President is like a President who is under siege.”

Meanwhile, Chishimba said he would have transformed Lusaka City a lot better than late president Michael Sata did when he served as governor under UNIP in the 1980s had he been elected mayor.

“I was a member of parliament, I was never mayor. So, I thought that, if I could accept that party nomination for the next three years, this Lusaka was going to change. This Lusaka in three years was going to be better than Michael Sata worked in three years. Sata was only governor for Lusaka for only three years (1985 to 1988), all those works that you see, the fly-over bridges, they were built in three years. What I wanted us to do was to implement the pronouncements that the council made under [late] Wilson Kalumba and among all the candidates, I am the only person who has been a friend of Israel; going to Israel for the past 10 years. So, cleaning of Lusaka, as resolved last year in 2017, I can assure you it was going to be done in a matter of three weeks and I mean it because I met all the actual mayors of all the cities of Israel, even the flooding issue in Lusaka was going to end,” he added.

Chishimba further advised President Lungu to always be wary of his allies while he is still Head of State.

“My advice to you, President Lungu, is that, all those men who have surrounded you today, learn from president Chiluba, learn from president Rupiah Banda, he was left alone. The Chief of Staff at State House, barely a month after president Banda left office, he went to stand as a State witness against Mr Rupiah Banda. You can learn from these men that people who [are] using your name; sometimes as President, you are not aware, they use your name, they loot because they know that there is no blood relationship between you and them so when that time comes, they will run away. So, it pays to listen to the voice of reason,” urged Chishimba.