All People’s Congress president Nason Msoni has advised former UPND vice-president Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba to take time off politics and reflect because the inconsistencies in his conduct are dangerous.

And Msoni says his party is attending the National Dialogue Forum under protest because he is under the impression that it is predetermined.

In an interview, Msoni advised GBM to reflect on his conduct.

“If PF has a hand to what happened to Mr GBM, I think it’d very wicked of them to have treated and maligned the man in a manner that they did. All of us as politicians are embarrassed with the state of affairs. Other politicians who seek quick wealth and money should learn a lesson from what has happened to Mr Mwamba. PF is a broke party, then a promise is one thing but to be given what they promised you is another thing. As politicians, we should take a leaf from the ill-treatment that the former UPND vice-president has gone through. It is difficult to win the confidence of Zambians if any of us as political leaders are going to conduct ourselves in that manner. We deeply sympathise with what could have happened to him whilst in the UPND,” Msoni said.

“We don’t know what could have happened to him, it could have a misunderstanding. But the mishandling of the aftermath and how he has personally mishandled himself, I think that leaves much to be desired… He should take time off from politics and reflect on what has happened to him. All of us are saddened, because no politician can make such dangerous inconsistencies. In less than two weeks you inform the public on this position and then afterward you turn 360 degrees, denouncing your very friends that you had assured. That’s taking political colleagues and Zambians for a ride. Normally I am restrained as a political leader from talking about other political leaders but in this case, this is troubling, that behavior is troubling and I do hope that he will take time off to disengage from the political discourse and reflect on his conduct.”

And Msoni said he was aware under the impression that the ongoing National Dialogue Forum was a predetermined process.

“We are apprehensive that we can get a good Constitution in an inbuilt majority of delegates who belong to the ruling party. We are getting the impression that we are following footprints of something that has already been crafted. We have to participate in a process that we have faith in. But for now, we are committed to run through the process, up to a point where we shall cry off and say ‘this is predetermined’. But then slowly we are seeing indicators that at end of the process, we may difficulties with the final product, believing that it may be one that is predetermined. So unless we are given the assurance by those who are superintending over this process that indeed this thing is the way it is. The easiest choice we had was not participate in this process. We felt that we would have legitimacy to denounce the process if we are part of it,” said Msoni.

“Secondly, if in future we are going to participate in a political process which will be part and parcel of the elections, we think that it would have been extremely difficult for us to go and play in a game in which we did not participate in the making of the ground rules. So we are here participating under protest. We remain highly apprehensive in the process, we do not agree, like many of our friends in the manner that this bill was crafted. But nonetheless, we want to give the process an opportunity to run its full course whilst participating and paying due diligence to every word spoken. Our friends in the ruling party have outnumbered everybody, looking at the number of participants are those that support the government of the day. We have seen that the process has been overwhelmed by government cronies, rendering suspicion that credible men and women are right to doubt the sincerity of this process. Nevertheless, we are determined to follow through the process to its logical conclusion.”