Movement for Multi-Party Democracy faction leader Felix Mutati says quarrelling about who should or shouldn’t attend the dialogue meeting is diverting focus from important issues like fixing the electoral system and constitutional reforms.

And Mutati said the Church is a critical partner in dialogue as it plays a vital role in making sure that peace prevails in the nation.

Addressing journalists at his house in Lusaka, Monday, Mutati said the noise around who should attend the national dialogue was unnecessary.

“There should be no quarrelling as to who should attend the national dialogue. If we are going to invest more time and say this one will attend and that one should not attend depending on their political standing then, we are not going to address the substance of the issues which are issues around the Institutional and Constitutional reforms. So I think we are spending a bit more time dealing with issues around processes and procedures and other noise when indeed we have a lot of work that must be undertaken by all of us,” Mutati said.

“And for me, the delayed implementation of these reforms is costing this Country. It is costing this Country in terms of diluting investor perception. It is costing the Macro- economic flame work such as exchange rates. So it is in the interest of us Zambians to make sure that this program succeeds. We need to talk about issues around the civility of our politics, issues of tolerance which is important and also issues of fixing the electoral system which to me are issues we must spend time on as a nation.”

He said dialogue should not be an opportunity for political parties to fix each other but be a platform for resolving outstanding issues affecting the nation.

“The dialogue as a platform, should not be used as a platform for politicians to fix each other but, it should be there to be able to bring out solutions that will accelerate the implementation of the critical reforms and strengthen the governance institutions as a bases of improved service delivery,” Mutati said.

And Mutati said the Church was the critical partner dialogue as it played a vital role in making sure that peace prevailed in the nation.

“The Church still remains the critical partner in various social service delivery. It is the critical partner on this journey of dialogue. A number of you will recall that we had a challenge of debt under HIPIC. We had a debt of more than Eight billion dollars at that time and it was the Church that campaigned vigorously to international to have that debt written off and indeed it was written off. So for us, they play a very critical role. And so, we are saying are confident that there is no absence of capacity of aspiration by all the parties involved to resolve these issues,” said Mutati.