A Patroitic Front (PF) committee member in Matero Constituency Martin M’hango has said it is too late for President Michael Sata to sort out the wrangles and divisions that have erupted in the ruling party.
M’hango said in Lusaka that Sata must realise now that not all the people around him were supporting him since it had emerged that there were camps that had intentions of dislodging him from power and installing themselves for the party’s candidacy in the next elections.
On Monday, Sata said members of the PF should stop calls for his endorsement because the ruling party believed in democratic tenets and other interested members were free to challenge his candidature in 2016.
Sata’s statement came after a long spell of silence on the matter in which observers said the president’s tranquility on the matter had fueling and exacerbated wrangles and divisions in the party.
Speaking in an interview, M’hango said Sata had already messed up matters in the ruling party because he opted to keep quiet when the opposing factions starting the tug of war a long time ago.
“Sata has contributed to the PF infighting by being seen to encourage members to discuss candidature endorsements and by allowing the Minister of Defence and Minister of Justice to openly attack each other,” said M’hango. “Sata has also been protecting both of them from investigations under the Anti-Corruption Commission over evident graft allegations.”
He continued: “It will be difficult to mend the damage that has been done so far. The president should have come out in the open during the initial stages of the matter. The party is divided across the country and the camps that we have will never work together again. If the Geoffrey Mwamba and Wynter Kabimba groups work together, then they will be pretending because there are deep divisions and hatred for each other.”
M’hango, who was reluctant to speak about the divisions and infighting that have characterized the once popular ruling party said the republican president was no longer in charge of party affairs t be able to stop the wrangles that have rocked the PF.
He said Sata was like a man who had been squeezed from under the belt and he was not able to react to matter that surrounded him.
“People such as Father Frank Bwalya are now being vindicated because the things they said about the president seem to be true. Father Bwalya said that the man in State House is not the Sata we knew. The character of the man of action we knew in those days is not there anymore. This is true because all this noise that is going on in the PF would have been stopped a long time ago. Also think people have realised that Sata is not vibrant anymore and they are taking advantage of that,” he said.
Of late, there have been calls among PF members to endorse Sata as the party’s presidential candidates for the 2016 general elections. The calls have degenerated into intra-party fighting where members are calling for the banishing of secretary general Wynter Kabimba who has been accused of plotting a palace coup d’état on the president.
During the State House meeting, which was attended by cabinet ministers and members of the PF central committee, Sata castigated PF members for failing to defend the party and government, which was under heavy criticism from opposition members.
The post Sata May Be Too Late to Solve PF Crisis, says Member appeared first on Zambia Reports.