ECONOMIC Freedom Fighters (EFF) president Kasonde Mwenda says PF will be embarrassed if they don’t deal with the issue of President Edgar Lungu’s eligibility before nomination day.

And Mwenda has warned that the country is headed for disaster if the Electoral Commission of Zambia proceeds to replace the 2016 the voters register, given the current pace of registration.

At a press briefing, Thursday, Mwenda urged PF to put their house in order or risk not having a presidential candidate in 2021.

“Our stance as Economic Freedom Fighters is a stance of the law and in a country like this one, we hold the Constitution supreme and we give this as free advice that the question of third term is of serious concern and from our perspective, this is what is staring in the face of the Patriotic Front but if they won’t take the advice we would advise them then to wait because we only have 273 days before we cast our ballot in 2021 but before that, there will filing of nomination and when they go to file in their nomination in a few months’ time, they should be advised that their presidency will be questioned, there are appeals waiting to be launched and our simple advice is come that time, if President Edgar Lungu is found ineligible, that will be a little bit too late, there will be no room for recourse,” Mwenda warned.

And Mwenda charged that the only way ECZ could manage to reach nine million voters target was through fraudulent means.

“From our analysis already, it shows that an average polling station is only recording maximum, an average of 30 people per day and our target is to have nine million people registered. If per day you are registering only 30, even as low as 15, some places are even recording less, and your target is nine million? Tell me, how long will it take for you to have these people registered? Do not wait for a problem to happen before we realise this is bad. Some problems we can even see them taking root and we are watching, we are heading for a disaster because if this register is taken away and the new one, we can only have a register that is nine million at this rate if it will be fraudulent. If the register will have to be ethical, then what is happening now has to change,” Mwenda said.

“If you are registering 29 people at the polling station when we have only 2,474 polling stations in the country, it means it will take us 3 months to register and how much time have they allocated to the registration, one month. Since we are adamant and we want to go this path, our advice to ECZ and to the overseer of this country, the President, it’s time to put money in ECZ. Don’t lose that register, we still need it.”

Meanwhile, Kasonde said the plummeting of the Kwacha was a sign that the country was being mismanaged.

“One eminent feature that has stood showing that we are not managing our economy well is the way our currency the kwacha has been plummeting. I remember too well in 2011, our kwacha was K3.92 to a dollar, 2020, we are ranging between K17 to K20 and yet we are a country that is highly dependent on imports…we keep borrowing again, the day these lenders will stop lending us money, this economy will crash. But we are not talking about something theoretical, what does it mean when the economy crashes? When the economy crashes, ba teacher tabaka fole (teachers won’t get paid). It doesn’t end there, where we are looking, that this government is taking us to a dark place,” said Mwenda.

“I foresee a time when there will be no medicines in the hospital. That is not even the future I was in Mufumbwe, there was not even Panadol. I was sure that when medicine finishes in the hospital, Panadol remains, when I went there, there was no Panadol, they asked to go and buy my own Panadol ku boma but this is a country where people pay taxes and these people are mismanaging our country and we can’t allow this to continue.”