By Staff Writer
MMD national Chairperson Winnie Zaloumis says the party respects former Republican and party president Rupiah Banda but he should not be destabilising the party.
And party national secretary Elizabeth Chitika-Molobeka says the MMD has a huge task to form government.
Speaking when party president Nevers Mumba met MMD leaders in Chipata on Sunday, Zaloumis said the former ruling party did not belong to an individual.
“Eastern Province is the number one province for MMD. Now as we go to the 2021 elections, we need to grab all the constituencies. They should go back to MMD because this province is MMD. Now when we say Eastern Province is MMD, we don’t mean that the party belongs to one person,” she said.
“If someone was in leadership, was our president, we should respect ba Rupiah Banda. He was the president but he should not be destabilising the party also because we all found the party and we are all going to leave it. We are the members of the National Executive Committee but one day we are going to go and other NEC members will come in,” she said.
Zaloumis urged party members not to allow some people to hijack the MMD.
“We should respect the person who is in leadership so that that person can work. Even money, you can have a lot of money but if you acquire that money in a bad way, it will go. We lost a lot of money in the three years we had wrangles which were even in court,” said Zaloumis.
“The money just went to waste, where are they now? Let’s respect leadership, even you here, if you don’t respect leaders, we’ll not go anywhere. I am urging you, let’s unite so that we bring back our party on the map. Even parties that were not strong are becoming stronger than us. Work hard so that we can see that the party is there.”
At the same event, Chitika said the MMD was coming from a background where it had wrangles for three years.
“It is in this vain that I want to talk to you as your mother; as your senior kalemba in the party that because we are starting, there will be so many teething problems in the party but we are going to prevail over these challenges,” she said.
Chitika urged party leaders at various levels to ensure that they mobilise and recruit new members.
“What I want to appeal to the leaders is that we invest in this party, you help the leadership of this party to invest in mobilising the people. We have the message, we want to tell the people what the MMD did and what we want to do, so it’s very easy for you to campaign,” Chitika explained.
“What we want is a political party that will stand on its own in 2021. This is the only time that we are going to field a candidate with the support of each one of us because each time when we want to do that, you find that there is confusion.”
During the meeting, Mumba explained to the leaders about the recent happenings in the former ruling party.
He extended an olive branch to all the party members who left to: “come back home.”
Mumba noted that there was no political party in Zambia which was well spread across the country than MMD.
He added that the November 5, 2020 judgment was one of the sweetest judgments.
Mumba said the MMD should win next year’s elections, just like the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) was destined to win Malawi’s elections slated for May.
He further told party supporters that the party was working with police to recover its vehicles.
