President Edgar Lungu says there were some people within the Patriotic Front with evil intentions who wanted to supplant him.

But President Lungu says he is available to contest the 2021 elections.

President Lungu said this in welcoming the Constitutional Court’s ruling which declared that he was currently serving his first term of office because the period which he served after Michael Sata’s death, from January 2015 to September 2016, cannot be considered a full term.

“A lot of people were worried about who their candidate will be in PF particularly and then we had speculators in the party of course who were wanting to take over. It is not wrong to imagine that you can succeed, success is inevitable, obviously there will come a time when I will have to leave. There are those colleagues I must say who were on tenterhooks, not knowing if I will be available or not, some had good intentions to replace me, some had evil intentions to supplant me but this has now been put to rest, we have an open space and the party has decided, at least at central committee level that I will be available, and I am available,” President Lungu told journalists, Saturday, after a routine early morning run with over 150 staff from Barclays Bank at State Lodge.

Meanwhile, President Lungu expressed concern with the number of youths dying from non-communicable diseases due to lack of exercise.

He encouraged citizens to adopt a healthy lifestyle by introducing exercise in their daily routines.