CHADIZA PF member of parliament Jonathan Daka says the UPND only needs to adopt the right candidate to win the Petauke by-elections.

In an interview, Sunday, Daka said people should not underestimate the ruling party in any election.

“You cannot underestimate a ruling party in a by-election or any election. Those people who think that a ruling party is not a factor in any election are just dreamers. In any election, the ruling party is a front runner. We’ve seen by-elections of the recent past that have been held, they are scooping almost all the by-elections, so how can you be saying that they don’t have numbers? We have to be real with what we are talking about. And if you look at the performance of the ruling party in 2021, it was actually 50/50 with the PF,” he said.

“I’m a member of parliament for Eastern Province. In my constituency I’ve got 20 wards, 15 councillors are UPND, five are for PF, including the council chairman. The only seat that they lost was for the member of parliament because I was too strong for the candidate. The ruling party has always had an upper hand and Petauke is not an exception. All they just need to do is to adopt the right candidate, that’s it. The ruling party’s task they have right now is to just select the right candidate, then they will scoop that seat”.

And Daka wondered what the country would become if former presidents disagreed with court decisions.

“We have seen former presidents being stopped from contesting an election and most of them have respected what comes from the courts unless they are telling us something else. Whatever the court says in Zambia is what we follow. Unless people are just doing politics. Sometimes you say things that you can’t even do. We’ve seen people talk about things that are not even there just to remain relevant. The moment we start disputing what comes from the court then what country are we going to be?” asked Daka.