UPND deputy spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa says if anyone will petition the 2021 elections, it will be President Edgar Lungu.

And Mweetwa says Southern Province members of parliament will write a letter of complaint to President Edgar Lungu over his tendency to tell lies about them each time he visits that area.

Mweetwa, who is also Choma Central UPND member of parliament, wondered where President Lungu got the idea that the UPND would be petitioning elections next year.

“Who tells him that UPND will be petitioning the elections next year? UPND is winning elections in 2021! Unless it is him who will be petitioning the elections, but on a serious note, it is very shocking that the President is making an initiative to go and discuss with headmen and chiefs, who don’t vote in Parliament for Bill 10. Bill 10 lapsed on the 4th of June. So, any negotiation about constitutional amendments, if it is about a Bill, it should be done in Parliament. So, we are wondering how we can leave members of parliament, who are currently sitting at Parliament, and undertake to perform a journey into the province and go and lobby the chiefs. We think that, as MPs, we are generally answerable to the electorate and so, the electorate have already spoken, they don’t want Bill 10 and nothing will change,” Mweetwa said.

And Mweetwa expressed worry about President Lungu’s tendency of maligning UPND MPs whenever he visited Southern Province saying the area MPs were now resolved to write a complaint letter to the Head of State against propagating lies.

“The President was saying that UPND members are attacking the officers issuing NRCs, but that is a blatant lie and it is dangerous to have a President who can lie publicly without any sense of shame! If the President wasn’t just doing some cheap politics by saying that, then he must have been ill-informed. But who can ill-inform him about something that doesn’t exist to start with? I think that type of fiction is very dangerous and it is clear that, as usual, when President Lungu is in Southern Province, his only agenda is to talk about the UPND. He doesn’t talk about why he has gone to visit the province, there is so much for him to talk about that can keep him busy, all the time having a nightmare about the UPND. I don’t even know if he sleeps at State House, it’s like President Lungu is haunted by HH. I can only imagine the way President Lungu looks at HH, he looks at HH like a ghost that should haunt him such that every time he goes to sleep, he just sees a ghost hovering around written ‘HH’,” Mweetwa argued.

“So, we think that he can do better, and that is the only time he can focus because when the people see that he is addressing their challenges, then they will take him seriously. Otherwise, the UPND and HH are not part of the problems the people of Zambia are facing, nor are we the current solutions. The current solutions lie in the policies that the government is able to put in between now and August 12, 2020, when we go to the election and see PF out. Talking about HH and UPND will not help.”

Mweetwa said UPND MPs in Southern Province were concerned about the lies.

“We shall write a polite letter; the contents will be very clear: we shall be asking the Head of State to desist from telling lies to the nation. The office he occupies is too big to be used as a podium for lies. We know this is a government of lies, but now it’s too much! However, we are not completely shocked because the President is heading a government that can receive a donation of bicycles and they don’t know who has donated. So, if they can’t know whether the bicycles have been donated by India or an NGO, it is demanding too much of such a government not to tell lies, but again, it doesn’t have to take the President to lie,” said Mweetwa.