All People Congress leader Nason Msoni says if the Patriotic Front loses the 2021 elections, it is unlikely that President Edgar Lungu and his daughter Tasila will escape prison because their corruption is well documented.

And Msoni says President Lungu’s reluctance to fight corruption has reduced donor confidence.

On Sunday, President Lungu accused the opposition of leading a malicious campaign to brand all PF officials as criminals.

“Our friends are resolved to paint PF to look like criminals and theives and corrupt people. That’s what they have told them, even when they are speaking in parliament, they always say ‘this government of PF, corruption’, ‘this government of thieves’, you can see that it’s an agenda. The agenda is to make us look very ugly in the eyes of we’ll meaning people. So that we look like corruption people, criminals who are bent on plundering the resources. So we have a duty to explain where the money is coming from. If it is debt, we acquire it and then build a school or a hospital, we’ll pay,” said President Lungu.

But in an interview, Msoni said President Lungu was panicking because he would go to jail.

“When we’ll start spilling the corruption, you will not even raise your head and in fact, the panicking of trying to steal an election because he is afraid that when he leaves State House, him and his daughter Tasila will go to prison,” Msoni said.

“Tasila has never worked anywhere where she earned so much money that she can buy properties all over Lusaka. This has shocked us. She is building shopping malls where does she get the money? Where has she ever worked that has she been able to get legitimate resources that she can have so much money? Please don’t provoke us because what we know can run down your government. He is the dirtiest President in the region in terms of corruption. He lacks the ability and capacity to deal with corruption. His corruption has held him hostage to effectively run government. He can’t sack corrupt criminals because he is held hostage. We challenge him to deny this material fact. The lawlessness and the violence manifesting in the PF is been fed by the corruption money. Unfortunately for them, the violence is starting to consume the very architects of the violence themselves. What transpired last week was a question of hyenas eating one of their own.”

Msoni said the debates about corruption were not malicious because there was enough evidence of corruption.

“The downfall of Mr Lungu lies in his failure to accept counsel. Look how the reports, all the previous Financial Intelligence Center (FIC) reports have gone unanswered. He has chosen to ignore the findings of fact which has been unveiled to his government. And these have not attracted any concern not even the Auditor General’s report of the corruption in his government. Even the corruption in his own back yard, State House, is replete by so many scandals which we can itemize one by one,” he said

“Today Zambia is a pariah state. Mr Lungu himself as President is a pariah state he has no known friends because all his friends have shunned him because of corruption that is why he quickly rushes to befriend a new man like President [Félix] Tshisekedi of Congo who doesn’t know him to well. Very soon when Tshisekedi knows who he is and discovers like all the other Presidents including the President [Uhuru] Kenyatta discovered that they where not on the same level he to Tshisekedi will dump him because he is a President (Lungu) who protects corrupt criminals. He is a president who fights people who are telling him look this is corruption can you deal with it, he will fight you instead of chasing away criminals from his government. Now the logical thing of any leader with political conviction and serving the interest of the nation, the first culprits he should have sorted out he should been all those criminals who have been indicted by the FIC report. But he chose to ignore that report to pursue drunkards. We think that he is being economical to the truth to assert that the opposition are trying to soil his party with corruption.”

And Msoni said Head of State’s reluctance to fight corruption had reduced donor confidence.

“I think that he needs to re-examine some of his statements, whether these statements are being written by other people. The other people who are giving him these statements should be fair to Mr Lungu because these statements are not helping him. Donor confidence has completely evaporated and also to some extent we suspect that his will to fire [Margarate] Mwanakatwe could be an instruction or a position by our international cooperating partners. They may have given him that position that for you to be able to get any money, you sack the Ministry of Finance, that is how probably he has sacked Mwanakatwe. In a nut shell, you can note that this actually the correct position and this is the signal we are getting that the international community has expressed concern in the manner that our finances are being managed,” said Msoni.