3 July 2009
FORMER opposition Patriotic Front (PF) secretary general Edward Mumbi has described his former party's pact with the United Party for National Development (UPND) as meaningless in the absence of the written agreement.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Mumbi wondered how a few top officials from the PF and the UPND should express confidence that the pact would work without releasing a document which should be the basis for the citizens to judge.
Mr Mumbi said the PF and the UPND were two different parties with different policies hence the need for them to come up with a document spelling out a common ground if the pact was a genuine.
He said among the two parties, one of them, the UPND had allowed its Members of Parliament (MPs) attending the National Constitution Conference (NCC) while the PF had vehemently refused its members to be part of the Constitution-making process and wondered where the common ground lied.
Mr Mumbi said the current Constitution had no provision for a running mate and wondered what would happen if either PF leader Michael Sataor UPND's Hakainde Hichilema happen to win an election.
He said the pact was empty unless the two parties came up with a clear platform.
"As it is now, it is difficult for Zambians to support any of them in the absence of a written document," he said.
The two parties should realise that politics was about numbers and that despite the top brass expressing confidence that the pact was strong, it was onlythe general populace that should judge.
The former PF secretary general said if the pact was genuine, Mr Sata should have also allowed its members to go to the NCC and fight for a running mate clause.
He gave an example of the Rainbow Coalition of Kenya which caused that country to plunge into anarchy because of failure by the parties involved to come up with a common ground.
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