President Lungu challenges political foes

President Edgar Lungu today threw the bait at his political foes whom he challenged to translate their personal business success into benefits that would trickle down to the ordinary people in the community they operate from instead of continued attacks on his government efforts to create jobs and reduce poverty.
In a rare ‘punch for punch’ unscripted address to the full to capacity Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola, Lungu, an accomplished lawyer turned politician said there is no way his political foes, most of them business people, can fulfill promises of improving the lives of Zambians at a national level when they have failed to practically do so in their personal business levels.
“We have some contenders that brag that they are rich, they have thousands of cattle but have failed to reduce the price of beef so that even ordinary starving Zambians can afford meat,” President Lungu said to a chanting crowd captured by the state broadcaster ZNBC.
“We have another businessman that owns a milling plant that produces mealie meal but refuses to slash mealie meal prices to afford the poor a decent bag of mealie meal,” said President Lungu.
The head of state drew a sharp analogue from the richest man in Africa Aliko Dangote whom he commended as ‘admirable and patriotic’ for bringing down the prices of cement in Zambia after he established a cement plant in the copper belt province.
President Lungu also beseeched Zambians to carefully chose a good leader that has been tested under strenuous circumstances to govern the southern African country another five years instead of “experimenting” with leadership at national level with ‘green horns’ that seek experiments.
The Zambian leader said he was the right man for the job because he has managed to unite the country, working even with those that had bitterly fought him in 2015 and extending olive branches even to those that had wished him ill.
President Lungu repeated the PF mantra through the PF manifesto that boasts of erecting more than 8000 kms of roads, schools, universities, $4billion investment in the electricity sector, the first in 40 years, health posts including quick delivery of farming in-puts that has led to maize production rising by 10 percent to over 2.5 million tons of maize this year.
Under his administration, Lungu wants to produce more maize, diversify and add value to copper in order to create more jobs and reduce poverty.
Above all, he wants to continue on a path chosen for him ‘by God’ and not ‘Armageddon’ in order to free Zambians from the shackles of poverty.
He has been touted by local and international analysts as a ‘stabilizing’ factor with a huge temperament of sound leadership. President Lungu is widely seen as a front runner in the poll that kicks in, in under 69 days on 11th August. Traffic once again came to a total stand still in the mining town of Ndola and earlier Kitwe were President Lungu commissioned a 63 million Kwacha bridge across the Kafue River in Riverside. In the past people died trying to cross river until the PF started building the bridge in 2012.

PF [SOURCE: ZNBCTV and radio live nation-wide broadcast.]