Mongu Residents Reject Govt’s Call To Dialogue, Two Weeks Before Elections

MONGU residents have rejected government’s 11th hour call for dialogue to bring closure to the troubled chapter of broken relationship with the people Western Province.
“Let us use this sad occasion of the death of Bishop Duffy to reconcile and bring closure to the ugly past. Let us live in the future and reject the temptation to remain disunited,” Mr Kunda said as crowds roared with shouts of disapproval.”
Mr Kunda just stopped short of apologising for the police killings of Mongu peaceful demonstrators during disturbances earlier this year.
One youth shouted from the stands: “Just apologise, apologise and do not beat about the bush.”
But Kunda was applauded when he acknowledged Patriotic Front President Michael Sata, sending crowds into an instantaneous applause of “sense, sense, mwamukolo, mwamukolo!” in January this year, the MMD government ordered police to use live bullets to disperse people who planned to conduct a mass protest at government’s failure to deliver social services to the province.
Mr Kunda, who delivered a passionate speech extolling the virtues of Bishop Paul Duffy shocked many with the clarity with which he recounted the life of bishop his government loved to despise in life.
As he correctly eulogised the “astounding clarity” with which Bishop Duffy interpreted what he saw in the “telescope of life, mourners spoke to another in low tones that they wished government worked with Duffy in the way they are now remembering him.
Among the key issues Bishop Duffy articulated was the thorny issue of the Baroste Agreement and the widespread poverty the province continues to suffer.
An armed wing of the MMD youth on the Copperbelt issued public threats to the effect that they would travel to Mongu to beat up Bishop Duffy for “opposing government.”

Posted by Admin on September 5, 2011. Filed under LATEST NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.