By ZAMBIA NEWS FEATURES CORRESPONDENT
THE United Party for National Development (UPND) has blamed the catastrophe resulting from the Barotse Agreement in the Western Province on the laissez faire attitude with which President Rupiah Banda and his followers allegedly treat every crucial national issue as if it were not important.
Opposition UPND President Hakainde Hichilema said this in a statement late Tuesday which was also made available to the Zambia News Features and charged that it was not a secret that President Banda would rather watch a soccer match than attend to issues that affected people such as the adverse poverty and inequality in income distribution and over-all development in the country.
“The UPND condemns the violence and deeply regrets the senseless loss of lives in Mongu, which included a child. The innocent child that died could have lived to positively contribute to Zambia’s future economic development.
“The UPND wants to categorically state that, had President Rupiah Banda’s MMD taken quality time to diligently address the Barotse issue in a civil manner no lives would have been lost.
“With the blood that has already been shed, the UPND heaps the entire blame of the deaths on the MMD and Mr. Banda,” Hichilema said.
Hichilema said UPND regretted that it had to take a needless loss of lives for Zambians to realize that the MMD under Mr. Banda was on holiday.
“The loss of lives and the failure to address the Barotseland agreement issue is clearly a vote of no confidence in the failed minority MMD government. We see the Western Province issue as that of lack of fairness in the delivery of development efforts. The UPND is concerned that the dissatisfaction in Western Province, which is genuine, has a potential to spread to the entire country if President Banda continues to fly around the world instead of dealing with issues that matter in a responsible manner,” Hichilema said.
He said as a way forward, the UPND believed that the MMD government’s brutality and insensitivity should be replaced with a comprehensive and well-meaning dialogue with Western Province leaders and other stake-holders in order to secure a lasting solution to the problem and avoid any further loss of lives.
He said the the UPND strongly believed that the Barotseland agreement was a good basis for achieving the long over-due devolution of powers to Western Province and other regions of Zambia.
“In our view, this is the best way of bringing reasonableness and equity in the developmental challenges, priorities, opportunities and peculiarities that face the various regions of Zambia. We believe that on this basis Zambia’s resources will be shared fairly,” Hichilema said.
Two people died, several people injured and over 200 arrested in Mongu on January 14 when a number of Lozi loyalists took to the streets demanding the secession of Western Province from the rest of Zambia.
Read a related story here.
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