Munkombwe:Scott And SATA Have Sacrificed A Lot For PF

Daniel Munkombwe says Vice-President Dr Guy Scott and President Michael Sata have sacrificed a lot for the PF.

Commenting on revelations by Vice-President Scott that there is a plot to oust him, Munkombwe said he would not entertain any attempts to have the Vice-President hounded out of the party and government.

He said anybody organising demonstrations against Vice-President Scott was merely bent on creating disunity in PF and seeing the ruling party lose the 2016 general elections.

“I’m not one of the people who want destabilisation. I will not entertain disunity. President Sata and Dr Scott sacrificed quite a lot and now we want him out? [They] already got Wynter Kabimba out, and I am told that there is a list of people who should be dismissed. I will not entertain that myself,” Munkombwe said.

He said in Southern Province, there was a list of people identified as parallel leaders at provincial and district levels and “strangely, some of the people appearing on the list are deceased”.

“It is nonsense; those youths are just anti-PF, and anybody who is PF should know that we are in a difficult situation and if there is anybody who is using them, that person is wrong. We now need everybody.

To demonstrate at this time when we need unity is wrong,” Munkombwe said.

“We now need everybody, so there is no way you can still continue demonstrating. The party now needs every one of us, and if you are a reasonable leader, you should discourage the youths from demonstrating against people.”

He said politicians don’t gain political strength by inciting demonstrations against others.
“You lose out by demonstrating. There are people who can do without the party but this time, PF needs more people than any other party because we want to get back in government by 2016,” Munkombwe said.

Munkombwe, who is also Southern Province PF chairperson, said whoever was behind the plot to oust Vice-President Scott was putting people in a difficult situation.

“Those people in leadership, those members of the central committee, the provincial executive committee members in the country, we need them; district executive committees, we need them; wards, we need them.

This is the time for unity and I don’t think it is right for anybody to encourage demonstrations or if there is a reasonable youth, it is them who should know that the new secretary general [Edgar Lungu] the central committee, the President needs everybody,” he said.

Munkombwe said even being seen in the presence of people who were once in trouble with the PF over disciplinary issues should be healthy for party unity.

He said political experience had taught him that unity was cardinal for any political party in hard times.

“A person of a long political standing like me knows how unity is important at this particular time,” said Munkombwe.

“Political parties collapse in some special ways, they collapse by people organising demonstrations in the hope that they be seen to be strong.”

Speaking to journalists at his Parliament office on Thursday, Vice-President Scott said some cadres had been mobilised to demonstrate against him in the way they used to be set on Wynter Kabimba but they changed their plans at the last minute after the police got wind of it.

“There was supposed to have been some demonstration in which some youths wanted to say stuff against me. The whole thing is nonsense. People are trying to use frustrated youths without jobs. There is an attempt to subvert my position. I have a good idea of the people I suspect to be behind this plot but I don’t want to bring out their names for now,” he said.

Vice-President Scott urged PF members across the country to be constructive, saying people were sympathetic to the party, going by the victories in the recently held parliamentary by-elections.

He said PF members should be cautious as the remaining two years before 2016 was long enough a period to destroy the party if the members conducted themselves carelessly.

“My job is to keep things together and it seems the job of others is to break things to pieces. It is not my job to play games. These activities by those who want to destroy the party are very destructive and will end up bad for the PF. If we are not careful we will end up to be the fourth largest party in the country. Let us not undermine the unity of the party by fighting amongst ourselves,” Vice-President Scott warned.

He also said there are attempts to frame him.

“Yesterday, I had a lot of journalists coming to my office, that there was a briefing when there was no briefing that was planned. Afterwards, there were some stories that appeared online that I will be fired when the President gets back from the US for holding a briefing. So it’s clear there are some people who are trying to stir up things,” said Vice-President Scott.

Posted by Kunda on September 27, 2014. Filed under POLITICS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.