PF should be blamed for Costly presidential election

By Willie Limata

The Patriotic Front should not pretend that they are not behind the creation of the costly presidential election. The problem of this Government thinks that they have monopoly of intelligence. When people provide divergent views to their running of the Government, are always labeled as enemies. Zambians are threatened with arrest when they provide constructive criticism for national development. Many Zambians wonders the level of leadership in PF Government if it means well to the entire citizens.

PF should take the blame of the costly presidential election pending. The reason is, they denied the Zambian people a credible constitution which would have resolved the current crisis. The draft constitution contains extremely good articles such as presidential running mate and vice automatically becoming president in event of death and so on. Therefore if they had enacted the draft constitution in 90 days as they promised Zambians people, then the nation would have avoided a costly election.

When civil society and other well meaning Zambians were pushing for a new constitution, they were called all sorts of names. I remember one senior PF person said we have a valid constitution and accused civil society of pushing an animal driving constitution. All senior PF members including some briefcase civil society said it is not a priority and it is costly to enact a new constitution. Now which one is costly to have a presidential elections or enacting a constitution? The caliber of the current leaders leaves much to be desired. It is evident that they are now reglecting of not enacting a new constitution and no wonder they were called useless ministers.

The funds for costly elections are easily sourced and one wonders why it is difficulty to fund the public universities and new constitution. It is very clear that the current government has failed Zambians and they do not deserve to continue running the country.