PF disciplinary committee chairperson Tutwa Ngulube says the low voter turnout that characterised the Kabwata by-election is a sign of protest by the youths against the UPND leadership.

And Ngulube says the former ruling party’s performance in the just ended by-election shows that people are still with the PF.

In an interview, Friday, Ngulube claimed that most youths shunned the Kabwata polls because of President Hakainde Hichilema’s decision to appoint old people to most positions.

“Those young people that voted for Bally in huge numbers have failed to show up. They have protested. They are sending a message to him that they are not interested in the stories that he has actually been peddling. When he said that ‘I am going to appoint young people to government’ he started appointing very old people, 91-years-old, 81-years-old. Those are the District Commissioners that he is putting up, when will the young people get jobs? University students and college students were told there will be free education up to University [but] when he begins his presidency, he tells them, ‘no, I meant into grade 7’. So now all those students that were voting for the university thinking that they are going to school for free still have K27,000 to pay, have to buy groceries, they still need to shoulder the responsibility of educating themselves. They are asking themselves [that] what is the point of voting for Bally when actually he has failed us,” he said.

“And Bally must now begin to ask himself questions, where have the youths gone all of the sudden? The young people, the graduates that he promised jobs and free education, where have they gone all of the sudden? So all we want to tell him is this, [it] is just six months after the general election and he is failing to get an outright majority. Come 2026 UPND will not have any seats here in Lusaka. And the UPND’s lesson for Kabwata should be like come 2026 they are going. And the reason why they are going is because they have been telling lies to the people about campaign promises. They have been lying to the people about implementing things like the lower Zambezi. There are a lot of reasons actually why people have actually protested.”

And Ngulube says the former ruling party’s performance in the just ended by-election showed that people were still with the PF

“For us as PF, we feel the performance of the PF in the Kabwata by-election was excellent as the people of Kabwata have shown that they are still with the PF. Especially places like Chilenje, the performance of the UPND was very decimal. The UPND must wake up, the fact that their candidate failed to even get 50 percent of the all vote shows you that the people have no confidence in Bally’s government. And should there be another by-election in Lusaka Bally will see that his popularity has really gone down. Today as we are speaking to you, Bally spent 11 days full time from morning until evening campaigning in Kabwata, even wearing boots in water. All that energy failed to translate into the majority vote for themselves and they survived because the violence that was characterized yesterday (Friday) prevented some people from voting. If people were free to vote, Bally would have lost Kabwata,” said Tutwa.