The PF on the Copperbelt has risen against Lusaka Province Minister Bowman Lusambo who alleged branded the recently held provincial elections as useless.

Prior to the intraparty polls, Lusambo de-campaigned Luanshya Mayor Nathan Chanda, who emerged winner of the provincial chairmanship, saying as an elected official, he would give the party divided attention.

But Mpongwe PF constituency chairman Emmanuel Kasambo said it is unfortunate that Lusambo had failed to stomach the loss his group suffered.

Kasambo charged that even Lusambo’s MMD style of campaigning, distributing money to delegates in the last hour, failed.

“We all know that Bowman wanted to be Provincial Chairman and when his attempt failed, he anointed his own and went on rampage in campaigning for his candidate. It’s disappointing seeing how much Hon Lusambo is panicking trying to discredit the newly elected Provincial leadership on the Copperbelt. Hon Lusambo tried to introduce the MMD style of campaigning of distributing money to delegates on the last hour, this attempt failed and we also saw it fail to work in the MMD in 2011. We are beginning to feel that Bowman is being used by other unknown forces,” Kasambo said.

“The conference we had on the Copperbelt was opened by His Excellency the President of Zambia, Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu and everyone who came saw it as a success and the real meaning of democracy manifested. It’s extremely unfortunate for Bowman to come and call such an occasion useless simply because his preferred candidate lost.That’s very unfortunate and unexpected from a man of his caliber. Bowman tried all the means of making his preferred candidate win, he sent a bus to pick the people of Mpongwe which failed to work, he personally came to talk to me in the presence of other people to convince me and he gave me a lot of wrong information just to convince me to support his preferred candidate.The people of Copperbelt have spoken, the party structures have spoken, councilors have spoken, MPs and so on.”

Kasambo asked Lusambo to stop dividing the party on the Copperbelt.

“Us in the Copperbelt are wondering as to why the Provincial Minister for Lusaka has been working hard to see that there’s a problem in the Copperbelt Province. We are saying this because he has been on record before elections to have alleged that chiefs in the Copperbelt had endorsed his preferred candidate when it was not so. We know his tactics of mentioning chiefs who are actually non partisan whenever he wants to manipulate the decisions of other people, this tactic has always failed,” he said.

“I wish to advise Bowman to avoid issuing dividing statements, misleading statements because the president has a very powerful office to verify the information on the ground. The people on the Copperbelt can also see how peaceful and nice things are on the Copperbelt. We only had confusion and problems when Bowman was Provincial Minister. Let Bowman tell the people of Zambia if he has a personal problem with the current Chairman elect because Bowman was very personal in his campaigns and he seems to continue with that trend. His worship the Mayor of Luanshya, our current provincial chairman is now a member of the central committee, the highest decision making body of our party. He is senior than Bowman and demands to be respected.”

Kasambo asked the Central Committee to advise Lusambo to respect the new leadership.

“I call upon other MCCs to advise Hon Lusambo to stop disrespecting MCC Nathan Chanda and realize that he is now the boss on the Copperbelt. We wish to assure His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu that PF will grow even stronger with the current leadership and 2021 will be a walk over,” said Kasambo.