All People’s Congress (APC) leader Nason Msoni says Zambia is slowly becoming ungovernable because of the nature and conduct of President Edgar Lungu’s style of governance which is characterised by lawlessness.

Meanwhile, Msoni says the only viable option that the country has to get itself out of the current financial crisis is regime change.

Commenting on government’s failure to give grants to the University of Zambia and Copperbelt University for payment of staff at the institutions amidst threats from Higher Education Minister Prof Nkandu Luo against lecturers, Msoni argued that government positions should not be used as channels through which people express their frustrations but should help enhance development and social harmony.

“People who are highly skilled and trained cannot be treated with such disrespect in the manner that Prof Luo has treated them. We condemn the behaviour of this government and it’s wrong for president Lungu to side with prof Luo and to commend her for causing confusion. Dialogue in matters to do with labour is an important component for industrial harmony. We don’t believe that fire can be quenched with fire. Therefore, our leaders must act more responsibly. Government positions should not be channels through which people express their frustrations but rather should help enhance development and social harmony,” Msoni told News Diggers in an interview.

Msoni further described as poor governance style for the country to be perpetually inducing by-elections and spending so much money on by-elections which could be avoided.

“It’s an act of irresponsibility on the part of this government to be spending colossal sums of money conducting unnecessary by-elections which could have been avoided and because all the money is being channeled to these by-elections, the net effect is that we are unable to pay government employees. This government for all intent and purposes has stripped value from our citizens, it is eroding value from our citizens because all the resources are going towards the consolidation of power by one man to the exclusion of everybody else. It will not be entirely surprising or shocking that we will revert back to the old system where council workers were getting one chicken and one bag of mealie meal because government was unable to pay them. And I think this is the direction where this country is headed if we don’t quickly arrest this situation that we are in,” Msoni said.

Msoni said that the only viable option that Zambia had to get out of its quagmire was regime change.

“So the precipitating forces of regime change in the country speaks to Mr Lungu’s poor governance style and if anybody has not noticed that the dynamics have shifted, then am afraid that this person must be living in a fool’s paradise. Because everything on the ground has shifted. It’s a question of when, rather than if. Calling for early elections will help solve some of the challenges that this country is facing because now there is no donor confidence in the management of public affairs. I don’t think there is a donor who is willing to give money to this government. The lack of political will to fight corruption is there for everyone to see. So we have credible doubt that even the IMF will come on board irrespective of the lobbying that our Minister of Finance is carrying out. We don’t think anything tangible will come forth because the credibility of this government has been eroded because of the inability by its leader to fight corruption,” said Msoni.

“One would get the impression that this President in fact openly defends suspects of white collar crime. And this has eroded public confidence in his capacity as Head of State to fight corruption. So I think regime change is the only viable option that this country has to come out of its current quagmire. You can’t have the whole entire cabinet abandoning their portfolios, going to campaign in by-elections and being paid salaries for civil servants for campaigning in partisan elections. I think that is not how you ran government. This is a very serious omission on the part of Mr Lungu himself. This President needs to come to the realisation that he was employed by Zambians to deliver deliverables. But all we see is consolidation of power, trying to consolidate power for himself to benefit himself. This President has been campaigning since 2015 at great cost tax payers and now you have the entire government going into by-election campaigning at the expense of national development. I think this must come to a stop at the earliest opportunity. This country is slowly becoming ungovernable because of the lawless nature and conduct of the President himself. President Lungu is demonstrating lawlessness in his style of running government.”