PF’S ANTI-FELIX MUTATI DEMONSTRATIONS AND PETITIONS

Dear Editor,

I GUESS PF secretary-general Davis Mwila has a point by saying that they want to own Finance Minister and MMD president Felix Mutati 100 percent.

With apologies to the PF secretary-general, I would like to point out that the seemingly choreographed demonstrations and petitions from the provinces demanding that Felix Mutati should choose whether to remain in the PF government or return to the opposition MMD are really inappropriate at this juncture (“Mutati must join PF, says secretary-general”, Daily Nation, September 6, 2017).

Are they blind to the patently obvious? Felix Mutati is under fire, nay unending bombardment of scorn, by the other MMD factional leader Nevers Mumba – in whose view – for Felix Mutati’s ‘ill-fated’ decision to support and stand shoulder to shoulder with PF presidential candidate Edgar Lungu in the 2016 presidential and general elections.

Predictably, things have turned out rather ugly for the Felix Mutati-led MMD faction and the ruling party’s electoral alliance.

Others long cautioned the PF and the Felix Mutati-led MMD pair against the headlong rush into the electoral alliance without the grassroots approval.

Now the ugly aftermath of the 2016 general elections is threatening both the PF and MMD’s survival in the 2021 polls.

They want to focus on internal issues of consolidation and reorganisation as elections draw closer in four years’ time.

But the folly of PF’s anti-Felix Mutati demonstrations and petitions just keeps hogging the headlines.

PF and MMD have fudged, ducked and dived, but no, the story about their widening rift just won’t go away.

From both PF and MMD founder members’ camps, some are saying: Quit the electoral alliance Felix Mutati! You might be a liability to your party’s 2021 election fortunes.

How does he dig himself out of an ever-deepening hole? Of course – he finds a diversion.

Even better – he finds a diversion that has a really sympathetic spin.

What could be gloriously better than socio-economically saving the poor old souls down in rural Zambia?

What cold-hearted person would say silly things about someone who is giving muchneeded economic fiscal consolidation and attention to the awful social and economic plight of all Zambians?

Maybe, just a thought of taking a cynical view of PF’s motives in launching the antiFelix Mutati demonstrations and petitions.

Mubanga Luchembe, LUSAKA