NATIONAL Restoration Party president Elias Chipimo has told Zambians to call time “on this presidency” and remind it that in 2021 “tuleya ku chipimo (we are going on a scale).”

And Chipimo says “we can blame the leadership all we like but unless we wake up to the reality that we have all let down our country, we will never move forward in addressing the problems we face”.

Chipimo said Zambians have tolerated political leaders’ mediocrity, corruption and greed, pushing the country into a situation where “an unelected cadre can put the fear of God into an appointed public official because of his connections to the highest ranking officials in State House”, among other vices.

Addressing journalists at the National Restoration Party (NAREP) secretariat in Lusaka yesterday, Chipimo, whose address was titled “where is the love,” started by quoting 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1 which says that “if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have no love, I am nothing but a resounding gong or a tinkling cymbal.”

The opposition leader then regretted that Zambians began another day with the realisation that “we are mourning the loss of yet another icon of our freedom struggle Mama Kankasa” who died in Johannesburg, South Africa on Monday.

“Her calmness, sense of dignity and desire for national unity are qualities we should each seek to emulate if we are to build a Zambia that she and her colleagues who were blessed with patriotic vigour at the time of our independence fought so hard to achieve,” Chipimo said, recalling also that October 29, when Mama Kankasa died, was the anniversary of the passing away of his mother Anna Chipimo “whose death along the Mpika – Kasama road on the 29th October, 2018 was the trigger for my entry into politics.”

Chipimo, who was flanked by his vice-president Charles Maboshe, asked why the PF government had borrowed “to buy a presidential jet valued at nearly US$50 million when our rural communities are struggling to educate their children, feed their families, address their basic health needs and attend to their legitimate modest aspirations.”

“Why must we spend 45 per cent of our national income in 2019 on paying off our debts? 42 per cent on running government operations [and] leaving only 13 per cent for healthcare, education and social support for the vulnerable! Why must we cover up the theft of money meant for the poor?” Chipimo wondered.

“Why are we living at a time when ordinary Zambians are being punished for the reckless decisions and incompetence of our leaders whose lives have only gotten better? They have become richer and richer through charging so-called investors’ access fees to meet with high-ranking officials and through the immoral inflation of contract values on public goods and projects.”

He added that Zambia’s numerous problems hinged on majority citizens’ belief that somehow, electing leaders would mean that “they cared for us, that they would be concerned about corruption, that they would be corrupt but not too corrupt, authoritarian but not too authoritarian.”

“We somehow believed that electing them, even though they were visionless, they would operate in the best interest of the nation. But we have to ask some fundamental questions: Why would a leader who loved his people not institute a commission of inquiry, an independent investigation into the death of a university student Vespers Shimunzhila? Why would a leader who loved his people allow Chinese road contractors to acquire huge tracts of land in a nation with such high levels of poverty and dependency? Why would a leader who loved his people not make it his personal ambition to address the corruption at the highest levels of administration that is destroying the lives of ordinary citizens?” Chipimo asked.

“Why would a leader that loved his people allow his nation to borrow huge sums of money [but] only to squander it on over-priced public contracts, government vehicles, planes and a personal lifestyle that consumes the very debts that we owe? It is hardly surprising that people believe that our nation’s wealth has been handed over to the Chinese.”