LUKASHYA PF member of parliament George Chisanga says the ruling party is afraid to approach his party for solutions to the problems it’s currently faced with because of the backlash it might receive from the public.

In an interview, Chisanga said PF and its technocrats were able to recommend the best ways of coming out of certain problems because of their experience.

“They (UPND) have now reached a stage where they have seen [the] reality and they have seen that the PF was a competent government. Chitalu Chilufya was a competent Minister of Health, they have seen that (Mutotwe) Kafwaya was a competent Minister of Transport. Now the fear they have is the public backlash, that is why they can’t come to us. They know we have the solutions to the problems they are having. Even when you offer to tell them we can help you, they are calling us crybabies. Please remind them that they promised people when they were voted into power, and all what PF is trying to do is we want to remind them of what they said,” he said.

“They have now come to terms and realised that the PF, both us as leaders and the technocrats that we had put into office are able to recommend the best ways of coming out of these problems bearing our experience and the competence that our technocrats had. If you have seen, they have removed most of the technocrats that we had put in office and replaced them.”

Chisanga said UPND was ashamed to approach former PF ministers, having discredited them in the past.

“The misfortune that we have with our colleagues, they do not think like Socialists, they have no feeling for the people in their hearts. For them, they think economics alone. Now, economics that doesn’t operate within the platform where people live, is not economics. We are giving them what we have called credible and effective checks and balances. We are objective in our approach, we are credible in our dealings with them. These people, if they were decent, they can even agree to sit with some of our former ministers who have run those ministries for a long time, but they are ashamed to do that because if you saw their campaign, their campaign was basically dissing our ministers. They were branding our ministers are thieves, they were branding our ministers incompetent, including our president that he was failing,” he said.

Chisanga said PF was the only party that had the privilege of understanding governance, both from the perspective of being in the opposition as well as in government.

“You must understand that the PF was in the opposition, you got into government and it has come back into opposition. It is the only party that has the privilege of understanding governance, both from the perspective of being in the opposition and also being in government and returning to the opposition. If you have heard what we have all said, even my colleagues, we make no illusion that there are really problems economically worldwide. And on that score, we sympathise with the UPND government,” he said.

“But sympathy is one thing, what we are focusing on is to ask our colleagues to find solutions that is why people are voted into power. When you voted PF into power, this country did not have adequate infrastructure for carrying out economical activities. The MMD did not have an agenda for infrastructure development. In our manifesto, we had all the agenda for infrastructure development. Every government is elected to find solutions to the people’s plight.”

He said the UPND had done the complete opposite of what they promised Zambians.

“If you heard the campaigns that UPND had put up, they had said they are going to reduce the price of fertilizer, they said they are going to reduce the price of fuel, they are going to reduce the price of commodities, especially mealie meal. What have you seen on the ground? They have done the opposite. Fertilizer has become more expensive, mealie meal is becoming expensive every day, energy is becoming expensive every day. We invested in infrastructure development in electricity, power generation plants were erected by PF. In providing governance, you look at the plight of people. What our friends have done, they have gone against their own promises which they made to you people in seven months,” said Chisanga.

“And what should the opposition do, we should sit back? Because if we say ‘you promised this and you have done this’, you are saying we are being petty, we are not being petty. We had even suggested to them that this electricity is going to affect everything else. They are about to increase public transport, a person in George Compound, in Mtendere will have to pay more money to go from where they are to where they are supposed to be, this could be avoided. If they can return the subsidies that we put ourselves on the purchase of electricity. Remember, they were accusing us of stealing K6 per litre from fuel because we were putting middlemen in between, and argued that they are going to remove middlemen. How can they explain that the fuel has moved from K16 to K26 within seven months? They call us cry babies but they are the ones crying like babies.”