MMD-faction president Nevers Mumba says his trip to India was not organised by government but was facilitated by his own party working in conjunction with his international partners.

And Mumba has emphasised that his party will not engage in any political alliances for now, not even with the ruling Patriotic Front, insisting that the former ruling party was also organising itself ahead of 2021.

In an interview with News Diggers! explaining his assignment in India, Mumba said he had always journeyed outside the country for holidays and various programmes at the end of each year, adding that the trips were organised personally and by the party, depending on the purpose of the trip.

The former Republican vice-president explained that he had to speak to some investors while in India and talked them into investing in Zambia because he was a statesman who cared about Zambia.

“I usually go outside the country at the end of each year for various programmes and these trips are organised by my office and one of my organisers is in Pennsylvania, (United States) Robert William, he’s the one who does the planning and exchange programmes for my meetings around the world. He is originally from India himself, so he is the one who made the itinerary for me here in India and, therefore, he is on delegations together with my special assistant, Clement. But what we do is that when I am coming out to a country like this one, we send our itinerary, just information to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that they know where I am because I have been vice-president, so it’s important the country knows where I am. So, sometimes they inform their embassies, sometimes they don’t. But this time they did inform their embassy so we paid them a courtesy call during our programme and then continued with our programmes,” Mumba explained from India, denying speculation that government paid for his trip.

“Whenever I travel and I find businessmen that are coming to engage me, it is my responsibility to encourage them to do business with Zambian business people, more especially in the private sector since I am now in the private sector myself. So, we had a wonderful response from them. I was not speaking as a government official, but I was speaking as a private citizen, who is interested in promoting the welfare of my country.”

And Mumba said the MMD had no intention of engaging in any political alliance with any political organisation.

“Right now, the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy is concentrating on ensuring that our court case is resolved and we get our party back in shape. So, all of our efforts right now are on working on our political organisation. So, we really can’t be involved in political party alliances right now because we first have to redeem our party. How can we even be in any alliance before our party is reorganised? So, our focus right now is to make sure that we get MMD back. We are convinced that we are winning the case. And then the programme that we are going to have is the programme that we are going to announce. So, we are just waiting for the ruling and then, thereafter, we are going to announce to the nation how we shall push forward as MMD towards 2021,” said Mumba.