If you have fallen into a deep ditch and you are trying to get out, digging is not a very wise solution to the problem. Someone needs to tell our friends in the PF that they are in a ditch at the moment and they should stop digging if they want to rescue themselves. The manner in which they are communicating with the voting public and the solutions that they are offering the starving population shows that they are digging themselves into deeper problems.

It should not surprise anyone that PF officials are mocking the people who voted them into office,. One thing that is characteristic about President Lungu’s version of the Patriotic Front is that it does not really care about the people. For this PF, which is very different from Michael Sata’s PF, the people are nothing but tools to help them get what they want and where they want to be. What they want is to stay in power, comfortable and wealthy using state resources. President Lungu’s Patriotic Front is about sharing government contracts and other benefits.

Anyone who disagrees with this fact should be reminded that President Lungu endorsed corruption with his own mouth by stating that “ubomba mwibala, alya mwibala”. When translated and applied to a public official, this roughly means those who have access to state coffers are entitled to take public funds and help themselves. We have never had such a clearer and blatant endorsement of corruption and theft of public resources by a President.

This is what we are dealing with. We have a government that has no regard for the people it leads. A good politician must have heathy respect for public opinion. But this is not the case with this new PF. This should not surprise us because when president Sata died, Presdient Lungu was pushed to succeed him because many of the people that held positions at that time believed that it was their best chance to eat; and about that, they were right. They have eaten so much and become so full and forgotten who the real owners of power are.

If this new PF respected the people, they would be so ashamed by the comments made by Mr Mukupa that they would either apologise or keep quiet and hope that the story dies. But this is not what we are seeing. On Tuesday, it was Mr Mukupa, the national chairman of the new PF mocking the people about kandolo, and now it is the PF provincial chairman for Lusaka, Mr Kennedy Kamba who has chosen to escalate the mockery.

We are surprised that Mr Kamba saw it fit to publicise a picture of himself eating kandolo, in a very clean, polished and airconditioned office, where everyone can see that eating kandolo was not because he could not afford bread. Clearly, these friends are not getting the message. They are so detached from reality that they don’t understand the struggles of an ordinary person. For them, kandolo is a treat, or better still a healthy option when they are tired of eating bacon and baked beans.

The PF don’t understand that many people can’t even afford Kandolo when they are eating sausage, beacon and beans. They forget that when that kandolo is bought, it has to be cooked and cooking requires malasha or electricity. Mr Kamba and Mr Mukupa are rich people now and they have forgotten about the struggles of a common man.

These people remind us of that story which is told about the French queen, Marie-Antoinette, the wife to French King Louis XVI, who when told that the people had no bread, responded, “let them eat cake”. This remark is believed to have made her a hate symbol in the detached monarch and led to a revolution that saw her and her husband deposed.

Our friends in the new PF who have become very rich are behaving like the despicable Marie-Antoinette. Mr Kamba even has the audacity of saying “we are encouraging people to eat kandolo because this is in line with the pro-poor policy of the party”. Really?

Anyway, it is shocking that PF who are in a ditch are still digging. But this is what happens when people take power to serve themselves.