Patriotic Front aspiring chairlady for Lusaka Province Charity Banda says the only way to make youths and rural women stop complaining about the party’s failure to support them is through economic empowerment.

Speaking when she featured on the Burning Issue radio programme on 5fm, Banda also noted that certain expectations by some party members had not been met.

“Rural women, at times, they just think: ‘these people just come to see us when it’s time for voting.’ This trend should just change. The culture of handouts is not sustainable. What we should promote is real economic empowerment because everyone has to be empowered. When we empower, those women in rural areas, those youths in rural areas when they are empowered, you will never hear any cry. What they will be looking up [for] now will be: ‘what is the next step?” Banda noted.

She said cases of political violence could also be reduced if people united and stopped engaging in divisive actions.

“You know, from the time our party started, there have been some members who feel what they were expecting hasn’t happened, but now, what I want is the unity to come up and that unity the only way [to achieve it] as a party, we need everyone on board. They say: ‘together we stand and divided we fall.’ So, as a result, despite how these things happen, there are people who think that there are people who are choosing themselves. Let’s show that unity as a party. There is need for us as a party, and as a people, to unite so as to share ideas and build on the knowledge that we already have. This will in-turn reduce cases such as those of political violence and of political fights both within the party and amongst political parties,” said Banda.

“So, even those who are standing, we are one family, we are not doing it with other political parties, but within ourselves as children of one family. So, we need to have civility in the way we do our politics. So, to me, it’s very important to be a united party because when we unite, we will make sure that this party takes us a long way and we will help our President more because he won’t have time listening to people fighting, people doing bad things. And we want our youths and women to anchor to that, which our President has always preached, which is peace. We should even inspire those in [the] opposition to say: ‘this is what PF is doing’ and then we should make our leaders who are just appointed to give respect to the people. That is civil, [there should be] no character assassination.”