Opposition no match – Kamba

THE opposition will continue making time as the Patriotic Front train continues crushing them in elections in their own backyards even if they try to use violence, the ruling party’s Lusaka Province secretary Kennedy Kamba has warned.

Mr Kamba said in an interview that the Katuba parliamentary by-election was one of the examples as the opposition was headed for a crushing defeat.

Mr Kamba said the propensity by the United Party for National Development (UPND) to engage in violence each time they foresaw defeat was shameful.

He said no amount of intimidation in opposition party’s strongholds would win it elections because Zambians were not interested in maiming one another.

“When you look the trend of by-elections, violence has only been recorded in the UPND strongholds. They have been involved in all manner of mischief from the infamous Mapatizya formula to the recent violence in Sesheke, yet there was no violence in Bahati and Roan because the PF believes in issue-based politics,” Mr Kamba said.

“We don’t want any violence in Katuba. We know that they are foreseeing defeat in Katuba and the chances that they will engage in violence as campaigns are heating up are very high but, still, the writing is on the wall that they are headed for a crushing defeat,” he said.

Mr Kamba urged youths who had found themselves at the centre of political violence as either perpetrators or victims of attacks to reject being used by politicians who were only interested in winning elections and not in their welfare.

He said the spontaneous attacks recorded during by-elections had a telling effect on families and the community and as such, they must be avoided at all costs because they were counter-productive.

“If a politician is telling you to go and attack your opponents for no reason, just know that he or she is not a good leader. Youths must never allow themselves to be used as tools of violence.

“We want clean, incident-free campaigns where the winner and the loser accept the outcome of the election.

“The only way we are going to avoid election petitions, which are almost becoming a must after every election, is abiding by the electoral code of conduct and creating a level playing field as opposed to going against laid down rules and