Kanchibiya PF member of parliament Martin Malama says holding elections is a waste of money when the party in power is already delivering what is needed for the people.
And Malama says he wants the ruling party to improve the economy and better peoples’ living conditions so that it can be in power long enough like the Communist Party of China.
Debating President Edgar Lungu’s address to Parliament on national morals, ethics and values, Wednesday, Malama said people in China do not talk about elections the way Zambians do because the Communist Party was delivering development.
“Madam Speaker, if the economy is fixed, all the opposition political parties will stop talking because what they need equally is to see that systems are working properly for them. In China Madam Speaker, the Communist Party has been in power for how long? For many years, and that’s what we want PF to become. We want to see PF in government for another 30 years; we need to turn the economy around so that we can bring people on board. It’s the good policies, good economic policies, which sustain governments. You go to China; they don’t talk about elections, why? Changing what? From what to what? Similarly, ourselves we should stop talking about elections because elections are a waste of money! We should just fix the economy, make everybody happy,” Malama said.
“We need solutions to our problems Madam speaker; we can’t be living like this. If we had to reduce poverty, all the other things will fall into place and all those vuvuzela’s you are hearing who are talking, they will disappear. Because what people need is basically food on the table, the moment you provide food, the noise will cease. We have a situation where people are crying for portable water, we need to provide water to our people, we need to provide health care services to our people, we need to provide quality education to our people. “
And Malama said teachers were giving pupils leakages in schools becomes they had lost their integrity due to poverty.
“Our education system has collapsed, reason? The teachers have lost morals, they are the ones that are teaching our children leakages. When you are hungry, there is no integrity Madam Speaker, there is no integrity to talk about, you throw integrity to the wind. What integrity can you talk about when you are poverty stricken? When you are hungry? It is therefore imperative that we revamp our education system,” said Malama.
“We need to address the issue of nepotism as well. You can only get a job if you know somebody. Why should it be so? We need social justice, all of us are Zambians. So this kind of nepotism should cease, when there is job freeze, there is a job freeze for everyone. Not that other people should find jobs in the same industry which is frozen. We have got teachers who are in the streets, they completed schools in 2015, they can’t be employed to date, others are able to find jobs. We have got nurses who completed school 3, 4 years ago, they can’t find jobs, and others are able to permeate through the system.”