… @FRED M’MEMBE SHOULD BE REMINDED THAT PF HAS BEEN HAVING INTRA-PARTY CONFLICTS FROM THE TIME IT WAS FORMED; FRED SHOULD SOBER UP AND NOT DRAG HIS YOUNG BROTHER HH INTO DIRTY POLITICS

By Mark Simuuwe | It is shameful for Fred M’membe to assume that President Hakainde Hichilema is responsible for the Patriotic Front( PF) members of parliament who lost their seats.

Firstly , Fred as a PF member knows that PF has never had meaningful intra-party elections devoid of confusion from the time it was established.

The party was not founded on clean democratic rules . This is what gets them in trouble every-time they want to have a new leader .

PF has been suffering from a leadership crisis ; they literally have no potential and meaningful leaders to take over from Sata . PF died with Sata .

This is why President Sata once said , “there would be a vacuum in PF without me “. covered by Fred M’membe’s Postnewspaper dated around 19th July 2006.

This is the vacuum Sata was referring to . From 2015, there has been a vacuum . Though the vacuum in essence started right when PF was formed .

In fact , PF leaders have been fighting from the time President Micheal Sata established the party, even at a time they had MPs in parliament.

At some point , Sata expelled all PF MPs for supporting MMD motion in parliament , and these were supposed to have lost their seats as far as PF was concerned , but the MPs sought legal intervention in court because they thought they were expelled for playing their parliamentary roles .

Hence , the idea of expelling MPs is not new under the PF .

The only MP who was left out was Hon Mumbi Phiri. So this is not a new development and we should not be surprised.

This behavior of not tolerating divergent views is partly what made Edgar Lungu to close the Postnewspaper , apart from Fred M’membe’s divisive behavior and lopsided way of looking at things. Fred is toxic and a bitter man who has no permanent friends .

The PF fights continued even after Micheal Sata died with Chishimba , Jean Kapata fighting for the Edgar Lungu candidature who soon turned against KAMBWILI after he( ECL) became president and also went for KBF and Harry Kalaba .

ECL went for Harry Kalaba , Miles Sampa , KAMBWILI , Chitalu Chilufya , and KBF because these had presidential ambitions. This is one known PF characteristic; they fight amongst themselves when they aspire for positions instead of allowing grassroots to vote for them democratically.

Citizens may also recall that when it was time for the PF to adopt a presidential candidate after Micheal Sata’s death , Edgar Lungu and Miles Sampa viciously fought forcing Miles to leave the PF and only came back when mayoral elections were called in Lusaka . This is Sampa’s biggest weakness . Once there is an opportunity, he leaves all his brains and political morality and fronts self at the expense of others . He is an opportunist. But we can’t blame him because it is his constitutional right .

Today , we are not surprised that Edgar Lungu and Miles Sampa , are fighting , forcing Sampa to call for a snap election of himself as President of PF , and later dissolving himself and all positions he created , to reconcile and dine with ECL again .

Back to the expelled MPs . Sampa , as per PF behavior, expelled the nine affected MPs by writing the speaker of the National Assembly to also declare their seats vacant .

Article (72) of the constitution of Zambia is instructive on vacation of MPs from parliament when the party that sponsored them expels them .

It is even difficult for any court to do anything if the expulsion letters are properly before the speaker and the procedure has been followed . What this means is that , the MPs are gone !

To this effect , citizens may recall that when the parliamentary recess was called off and parley resumed , the speaker acted on the letter from the PF in the same manner the notice of new Chief Whip appointment was acted upon .

It is not the speaker , or HH or UPND who wrote that letter . It is the PF themselves.

Then how can this unreasonable citizen called Fred M’membe think , with all this dirty history of PF leadership , that HH is responsible for the vacant seats ?

Fred M’membe must sober up . He is too old for such kind of dirty politics. We expect him to practice mature politics and even show more maturity than his young brother HH .