UPND Chairman for elections Gary Nkombo says the PF will be given a bill so that they pay back the money which was illegally collected from bus stations and markets by their cadres.

And Nkombo says while he hopes that PF will remain strong, the outgoing ruling party will be lucky to survive another six months.

Speaking when he featured on Capital FM, Friday, Nkombo said although President-elect Hakainde Hichilema said there would be no retribution, money that was illegally gotten in the previous regime needed to be paid back.

“The President has set a tone where there has to be sanctity, there has to be a state of seriousness towards hard work. His exact words were that ‘In my life, I have not known the age 8-5 kind of culture of work. What I have known is deliverables’. That’s what President Hakainde has said. That must apply to everyone, that only where you sow, you must reap. That is a good culture because it increases productivity. Can you imagine the revelation of yesterday (Thursday) where we were told that PF cadres were racking in excess of 188 million bucks from bus stations, from Soweto and then you ask yourself where were they taking this money?” he wondered.

“Mr Hichilema has said there is no retribution, but I’m saying sorry Sir this is not about you alone, someone must account for that money. And I want to say if I’m not in the cabinet, we will send the message to the cabinet that wherever that money was going, presumably it was going to the PF secretariat, we are going to give PF a bill to pay that money back. We are going to send the bill to PF to make sure they bring back the people’s money because that money was obtained from markets which by legislation are supposed to operate under the market and bus stations act.”

And Nkombo said from the look of things, PF would be lucky to survive another six months.

He, however, hoped that the PF would remain strong to be able to offer checks and balances to the incoming government.

“PF had this common slogan ‘without leaving anyone behind’ but they were far ahead of everybody. And each time we said we were behind, they would say ‘lwenu’ (that’s your problem). The election results here show that people were behind and for them to catch up, they would have to go to the alternative group. Now this alternative group is not going to lose sight of the real thing that the power is with the people, that they usher you authority but they have the power, which power they can withdraw at the next opportunity. My prayer is that PF must remain strong because we need democracy, but from the way I look at them, I think they will be lucky to survive another six months. PF by their composition were not men and women with one agenda and in one accord. Each one was for himself. PF will be a shell very soon but my prayer is that they remain with that voice to be able to oppose where they see things not going right,” Nkombo said.

He said the Hichilema-led government would not tolerate arrogance from its members, as was the case under the PF.

“For now we owe the youths their lives because they turned up and so we have no excuse not to attend to their requirements because they are the bulk. They are the ones who are in dire stress, they are the ones who are in a difficult situation, they are the ones who have become teenagers, who have become adults still living on their parents’ roofs. They are the ones we must look after. We must create these opportunities deliberately to make sure that they wind off from their domestic father-mother shelters, marry and you get your wife and you take to your father’s house, that’s what is going on,” Nkombo said.

“Yet some people have been saying ‘if you can’t see the development that we have brought to this country, then you just go and get another set of spectacles’. That’s what they said to us that we can eat Kandolo (sweet potatoes), tute (cassava) as a replacement for bread. That to me comes out as an arrogant statement. And from our end, I would like to say to you that his excellency Mr Hichilema will not tolerate arrogance coming from his team imposed on the people who graced us with this opportunity to look at their interest and aspirations.”

Meanwhile, Nkombo said UPND Alliance partners enjoyed equal rights as the other members in the party.

“As the President opened his arms to the alliance partners, they enjoy full unrestricted affiliation to the political party and they are not second hand members of UPND. This one vote that comes with the alliance partners could be a trigger point for an election to be lost. So they enjoy equal rights and fortunately even as they came to work with us and as we accepted to work with them, there were no conditions that were attached. Without putting too much on what the Excellency the President said during his inaugural press brief, he said that ‘you watch the space’, the act of bringing this country together will first be manifested from the composition of his cabinet. So you will see from the composition of his excellency Mr Hichilema’s cabinet that the true motto of ‘One Zambia, One Nation’ is going to manifest in that particular composition of his cabinet,” said Nkombo.