Civil rights activist Brebner Changala has advised President Edgar Lungu to hold a press conference where he will address all the concerns that people have been bringing to his attention.

Speaking to News Diggers, Changala wondered why President Lungu had opted to leave all matters affecting the country to be handled by his Spokesperson Amos Chanda.

“PF has turned corruption into their legacy. Corruption, high taxes and abuse of power, that is their legacy. So the President must conduct a press conference where he’s going to speak to us through you guys in the media. He can’t just keep on gallivanting all over the show when we have so many problems as a country. And he has surrendered Amos to us, but us we don’t know Amos, he was not on the ballot paper,” he said.

“There are issues that the President himself must answer and they are plenty. Zambians have lost their citizenship to the Chinese through him. The President is the conduit of colonisation, Zambians don’t have any contracts or any employment because anything that glitters in this country belongs to foreigners. Zambians have been relegated to second class citizens. So the President must explain, when did we authorise him to surrender this country to the foreign powers? He must answer all those questions.”

He said the fact that Chinese were making roads was not reason for citizens to lose their right to them.

“By making roads all over and making the streets impassable, that is not the reason why we should lose our right to know what is going and who is going to pay. Zambians don’t even know what is going on, they just wake up and find the road is closed because the Chinese are making up this and that and the President tells you in Bemba to say ‘aba bonse abalepanga icongo fibuba basele tubombeko (all those people making noise are fools they should leave me to work) but naifwe tulefwaya tubombeko (we also want to work). We want to work in our right. We have been working before Mr Lungu came to power, but now our right to work has been disrupted. So you should look for President Lungu and ask him to explain why he’s running away from the people of Zambia. He should tell us that and I hope you find him,” he said.

Meanwhile, Changala questioned the morality of people who have been attacking British High Commissioner to Zambia Fergus Cochrane-Dyet for confirming that Britain had frozen donor aid to Zambia.

“There are two people here who have confirmed theft , that is the President and the British High Commissioner but I have seen in the last two days that people are going for the neck of the British High Commissioner. They are even writing editorials against the British High Commissioner and they have gone on the streets to collect every jim and jack to comment in the negative against the British High Commissioner. They are failing to go for the neck of the President, we want to find out why. Why are they not going for the neck of the President who has already shown that money is missing disciplining one of his cabinet ministers. Are they telling us that Emerine Kabanshi must be reinstated since money has been found? Are they telling us that the President must apologise to Emerine Kabanshi?,” asked Changala.

“And from this same talk, I am appealing to you the media. Can you find a way of cornering the President to come and talk to the nation. There are a lot of issues that we would love to discuss with our President, can he stop running away from you the journalists who are our conduit between the powers that be and we the governed. We don’t want Amos Chanda to be speaking to us, Amos is just there to protect his job. He is not an elected officer to talk about policy and other important issues. We need the President to engage the people of Zambia, period! The president has been running away from the people of Zambia for too long. He’s able to talk to the Chinese, he’s able to talk to his friends. But what about the electorate? When is he going to talk to us? There are a lot of things that have gone wrong in this country.”