Vice-President Wina tells parliament that President Lungu\u2019s statement suggesting he will only serve up to 2021 was misconstrued and that the PF and himself shall decide his candidature for the 2021 elections<\/p>\n
By Staff Reporter<\/p>\n
VICE-President Inonge Wina\u00a0says\u00a0the ruling PF and President Edgar Lungu will decide whether\u00a0he will contest the 2021 general elections.
\nAnd vice-president Wina said President Lungu never declared that he would not recentest the presidency when his term office comes to an end in 2021. She claimed President Lungu\u2019s statement was misconstrued and misunderstand.
\nShe said, \u201che said that his term of office, the current term of office, ends in 2021\u00a0and then, it will be decided by the party and himself whether he wants to stand or not.\u00a0So, if\u00a0there are leaders\u00a0who are\u00a0aspiring to take that position, hear me\u2026.\u00a0Madam Speaker, this country faces a lot of developmental challenges that leaders should worry about,\u201d Vice-President Wina noted.
\nDuring the Vice-President\u2019s question time in Parliament this monring,\u00a0Choma central UPND member of parliament Cornelius Mweetwa sought clarity on\u00a0whether or not President Lungu would be a presidential candidate in 2021, considering that the Head of State recently gave an ambivalent comment on the matter.
\n\u201cYour Honour the Vice-President, clinging on to power beyond reasonableness or beyond legitimate tenure of office is a common source of political instability in Africa as we are now witnessing a bizarre unfolding of the political situation in Zimbabwe. Sometime last week, I think, President Lungu told the nation that he is going only up to 2021 and quickly,\u00a0the secretary general of the PF rushed to the media to nullify the statement that the Head of State and his own party president had made, leaving ordinary citizens to wonder who to believe now \u2013 whether President Lungu or his secretary general of PF. This is bringing some level of uncertainty in the minds of the citizens. In view of the aforesaid, Your Honour the Vice-President, what is the correct position that the citizens of this country should take about President Lungu\u2019s desire to contest or not\u00a0re-contest in 2021 and not the legality which is being challenged in court?\u201d asked Mweetwa.
\nIn response, Vice-President Wina noted that\u00a0PF secretary general Davies Mwila\u00a0had\u00a0every right to inform Zambians the ruling party\u2019s preferred candidate.
\n\u201cMadam Speaker, clinging to power is not only a phenomenon of presiding Presidents because we have seen even in political parties\u00a0that leaders have held on to power for a very long time without\u00a0allowing intra-party democracy\u00a0to take root in those parties. The secretary general of PF has every right to\u00a0inform the nation as to the party\u2019s preferred candidate at any given time. So, this is what happened!\u201d Vice-President Wina said.
\nVice-President\u00a0Wina added that \u201cin any case, President Lungu never declared that he will never stand.\u201d
\n\u201cHe said that his term of office, the current term of office, ends in 2021\u00a0and then, it will be decided by the party and himself whether he wants to stand or not.\u00a0So, if\u00a0there are leaders\u00a0who are\u00a0aspiring to take that position, hear me\u2026.\u00a0Madam Speaker, this country faces a lot of developmental challenges that leaders should worry about,\u201d Vice-President Wina noted.
\n\u201cBut this insistence on the presidency by our leaders\u00a0leaves me to wonder whether we actually want to develop this country or we just want to be in State House. So, I would like to urge my fellow members of parliament and others out there that please, let us focus on the challenges that our country faces, the challenges that our people face so that we come out of this situation as a country, not to be scrambling for positions almost on [a] daily basis. I thank you, madam Speaker.\u201d
\nMeanwhile,\u00a0in\u00a0response to Kanchibiya PF member of parliament Dr Martin Malama who asked when\u00a0the\u00a0government\u00a0would\u00a0update\u00a0the House\u00a0on the\u00a0political stand-off\u00a0in Zimbabwe,\u00a0the Vice-President\u00a0underlined that, \u201ctoo many comments will spoil the soup.\u201d
\n\u201cThe President has already given a statement on the same matter\u00a0and for the Zambians, it\u2019s to wait and see. I think the country should know that as part of the SADC community, the President of the Republic of Zambia is the deputy chair of the Troika, a unit of SADC that looks into security and peace issues. Already, Zambia is engaged\u00a0in the process through its foreign minister who is already in Botswana and meeting other SADC Troika members to look at the issue of Zimbabwe. Our interest as government, Madam Speaker, is to ensure that the Zimbabwean authorities\u00a0reach a compromise\u00a0and resolve their differences amicably,\u201d explained Vice-President Wina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vice-President Wina tells parliament that President Lungu\u2019s statement suggesting he will only serve up to 2021 was misconstrued and that the PF and himself shall decide his candidature for the 2021 elections By Staff Reporter VICE-President Inonge Wina\u00a0says\u00a0the ruling PF and President Edgar Lungu will decide whether\u00a0he will contest the 2021 general elections. And vice-president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}