THE Patriot Front(PF) has maintained that Miles Sampa is not the party president and the impromptu extraordinary convention which saw his election was a fiasco and should be frowned upon.
PF vice-president Given Lubinda said the purported convention which ushered Mr Sampa into position of party president was “nonsense” and against the PF constitution.
Mr Lubinda, a former Minister of Justice, stressed that the PF leadership structure remains intact and the one led by Mr Sampa is an illegality.
In the wake of the High Court’s discharge of an ex-parte decision to maintain the status quo that Mr Sampa is PF president, Mr Lubinda said members from his team are the legitimate leaders.
“As far as we are concerned, we are the legitimate leaders of this party and anyone who is going round simply because of what happened today(yesterday) is simply a masquerader,” he said during a press conference last evening.
Mr Lubinda said he will fight for PF and is ready to be imprisoned in a quest to ensure that the former governing party is not decimated, allegedly through state machinery.
“I am prepared to go into prison for this. We are not going to allow thuggery of this kind because allowing this will be betraying the 20 million Zambians,” he said.
Mr Lubinda said allowing the PF, the largest opposition, to be grabbed and destroyed by Mr Sampa would amount to agreeing that Zambia” must turn into a dictatorship”.
“We will not sell the party for the love of money,” he said while urging Zambians to “rise, stand up” and defend democracy.
Mr Lubinda also threatened legal action against the Registrar of Societies Thandiwe Mhende for accepting documentation of change of PF office bearers submitted by Mr Sampa.
He wonders how Ms Mhende accepted the change of officers bearers by the Mr Sampa, whose election was done in abrogation of the PF constitution.
Mr Lubinda argues that Mr Sampa was illegally elected and has no power to make changes to PF office bearers and submit them to the Registrar because the extraordinary convention which ushered him in office was unconstitutionally convened.
“We are instructing our lawyers to call you(Ms Mhende) out and explain why you ignored provisions of our party constitution. The Registrar accepted the products of an illegality(which elected Mr Sampa),” he said.
Mr Lubinda also accused President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND of looking for opportunities to weaken the PF.
“They have been looking for the opportunity and they found it in the weak soul in one Miles Bwalya Sampa,” he said.
But UPND national youth chairperson Gilbert Liswaniso advised the PF to stop blaming the ruling party over its historic leadership wrangles
“You cannot say that UPND is involved when the fights for PF leadership started a long time, Don’t involve us. We want to see the PF to be strong and provide checks and balances,” Mr Liswaniso said when he called in during a live programme on Diamond Television featuring PF members Emmanuel Mwamba and Bowman Lusambo.
(Mwebantu, Saturday, 28th October, 2023)
