PF secretary general Davies Mwila says UPND has decided to deal with the American and British governments which are “broke”, abandoning the Chinese government which has money.

And Mwila says says the continued arrests of former ruling party members is an indication that the UPND government is a brutal regime.

In an interview, Mwila argued that without China and Russia, the UPND government would not achieve much.

“The promises that they have said in the budget, they are looking very good. I can tell you that they are very nice but they will not implement them, because the resource envelope is too small. Where are they going to get the money to finance the budget? The IMF always comes with harsh conditions. They have been misled by western countries, they have abandoned China. China and Russia are the ones who have the money. If you abandon the two, you can’t do anything, the infrastructure that we are talking about, it was provided by China and India. Did America and Britain come in? They are all broke! America is owing China trillions of Dollars, they are broke,” Mwila said.

“The money that Britain and America can give Zambia is $10 million for HIV or Malaria, nothing else. So because they don’t want to swallow their pride and go to China, because they told the Zambian people that the Chinese are not good, Chinese are the ones who have made us leave a legacy that we are talking about of putting up infrastructure country wide. If they cannot include China in the developmental agenda, I tell you they are not going anywhere.”

And commenting on the arrest of Pambashe PF MP Ronald Chitotela, Kawambwa PF MP Nickson Chilangwa, Chinsali PF MP Kalalwe Mukosa and former special assistant to the president for press and public relations Amos Chanda for various offences, Mwila said UPND was harassing and arresting PF members on unnecessary charges after failing to prove that they were corrupt.

“They told the Zambian people that the PF ministers had stolen, now that they can’t prove to the Zambian people that we have stolen, they have gone round intimidating, harassing our people, giving them unnecessary charges. You are aware that honourable (Ronald) Chitotela was charged, you ask them when did that happen? Honourable Chilangwa was also arrested, look at Bowman Lusambo’s case, it happened three years ago, you get my point. Because they have failed to prove to the Zambian people that they have stolen, now it has backfired on them,” he said.

“Look at the way they are harassing Amos Chanda. Not only that, you are aware that honourable Kalalwe Mukosa was also arrested. This government I can tell you even the UNIP regime will be far much better, which was a one party state. At the rate they are moving, they are too brutal. Look at the way they are harassing people. We are not in a democracy.”

He described Chanda’s arrest for insulting and obstructing ACC officers during a search as a witch hunt.

“Let them concentrate on implementing the promises that they made, fixing people will not help them. They are desperate, they can’t implement what they promised now, the only thing that they can do is to fix people. It will backfire. I can tell you that it is witch hunting because what did they find at Amos Chanda’s house? To go and get K95 000. They will search people but they will not find anything, they want to divert attention, let them implement what they promised,” Mwila said.

Meanwhile, Mwila said it was unfortunate that the UPND government was planning to increase fuel price when they had promised the opposite during campaigns.

“Your people want to increase the price of fuel. Minister of Finance honourable Musokotwane should not be saying that the PF government used to subsidize fuel and they were spending $21 million. Them, they said during the campaigns that the price of fuel is high because of the middlemen. There are too many middlemen, now that they are in government we don’t expect them to increase the price of fuel. What will make the UPND fail is because of the promises that they made, which they will not fulfill,” he said.

“There is also information going round that they want to increase electricity tariffs, those are the people who were making noise that we were not managing the country very well. Remember when we proposed the increase in the electricity tariffs, they are the ones who were in the forefront. So now what has changed? Because of the same promises, it will make the UPND go down. Let them increase the price of fuel, you will see the reaction from Zambians. Let them increase the electricity tariffs, you will see the reaction from Zambians.”

Mwila said PF was intact and would next week discuss its way forward in terms of leadership of the party.

“I can assure you that they want to silence PF but I can assure you that PF is intact. That is why you have seen no one is defecting to UPND. Our structures are intact, once we elect the president of the party, you will see that PF is still there and we are bouncing back in 2026. We are going to have a central committee meeting on Saturday next week where we are going to discuss the issue of the postmortem and then we are going to discuss the way forward for the party. So, the central committee will decide if we will go to the general conference this year or not. But I can tell you that we are reorganising ourselves and that we are ready for UPND,” said Mwila.