Nominated member of parliament Raphael Nakacinda says MMD president Nevers Mumba is a twit and a shameless leader who’s just jealous of his relationship with President Edgar Lungu.

On Monday, Mumba charged that Nakacinda is a criminal and that President Lungu was aiding his lawlessness by introducing him as MMD national secretary against a High Court ruling.

But in an interview, Nakacinda said Mumba was exposing his hatred and envy.

“About his allegation talking about me that I am a criminal, Dr Mumba, I think he is behaving like a twit. Whatever Dr Mumba was saying, he was just exposing his hatred and envy which is very unfortunate. He was just expressing jealousy and hatred, I think that he wishes he was the one in Chilubi and so on. We will not be distracted by anybody. All I am saying is that he is just a twit, a person who presents himself differently in public when in actual fact, he is a totally different human being behind the curtains. So I think Mumba is being overzealous and I know he is attempting to see whether he can come and work with the PF but all those things must be done properly,” Nakacinda said.

“There must decency in politics, you can’t just be shifting from place to place and especially a person who claims to be wanting to advance integrity and morality. What morality is there for Mumba pushing MPs that he never adopted and never campaigned for? Pushing for them to start paying for not only allegiance but start contributing finances to him? What kind of a leader is that? Sometimes we should be ashamed. If he really wants to push the interest of the MMD, his altitude could have been different. Not what he is exhibiting. There are certain things I have decided to go with to the grave within my heart because I was privileged to work with him I know him in and out. ”
He denied defying any court order and expressed confidence that his appeal would succeed.

“On the basis that, we have appealed and that appeal will go in our favor. We are very confident that it will go in our favor because we find the judgment of 5th November to be wanting in many areas. First of all, we do not agree with the judgment of the 5th of November and that is how come we have appealed. He was talking about be defying a judgment, there is nowhere we have defied the judgment of the 5th November. Nobody has stopped Nevers Mumba from calling himself MMD president; nobody has stopped him from operating, he has just failed on his own. For your own information, the secretariat which they have closed, we had left having paid rentals there for months, we never stopped them from operating there,” he said.

“If we were to defy that judgment, we would have stopped Mumba from ever having a meeting and calling himself MMD president but that has not happened. The only thing we have done is that we have appealed the case we don’t agree with the judgment and we have the right to disagree and the court itself granted us the leave to appeal and on the basis of that appeal. We have a duty to brief our members who are extremely dismayed by the fact that the courts would grant a person with no legitimacy to call himself leader of the MMD.”

Nakacinda also denied of being in possession of MMD vehicles.

“He is saying that I have stolen MMD vehicles. MMD vehicles are in the hands of party officials and they have thirst to get those vehicles, obviously with the intention of wanting to sell them. The members across the country have said ‘we need a proper hand over and who are we going to handover these vehicles to?’, because at the secretariat, they refused to have a proper handover; they went, broke into the offices and attempted to start operating without any handover note and then after two weeks they are saying ‘can you come and handover’,” said Nakacinda.
“If at all there was any criminal activities on party vehicles, then it means that collectively, all of us who were in leadership, including honourable (Felix) Mutati, and everyone else could have been involved in that criminal activity; but there is no such thing and those vehicles he is fighting for. He is not even the one who bought them; those vehicles were bought under the leadership of president Rupiah Banda and remember that they were seized in courts because of the court matters that were running.”