Will it be fourth time lucky for Sata?

PATRIOTIC Front (PF) leader Michael Sata says he will contest the 2011 presidential elections despite some people suggesting that he is too old and he needs to groom a younger person. But will he be fourth time lucky? Sata has contested the 2001, 2006 and 2008 presidential elections and lost in each case.

But speaking during a rally at Senama grounds in Mansa May 11, Sata said voters should choose leaders who have the interest of the people at heart and not leaders whose main interest was to make money for themselves. He called on people in Luapula Province to register in numbers during the voters registration exercise in preparation for the 2011 presidential and general elections.


Sata was accompanied by Chimwemwe member of Parliament (MP) Willie Nsanda, Chililabombwe MP Esther Banda and other senior officials from the Copperbelt. He said some of the young people whom he was looking forward to grooming had disappointed him because they were more interested in money and not what the PF stood for.

He said some PF MPs from Luapula Province were more interested in putting money in their pockets and did not care about the non -availability of medicine in hospitals, low salaries of public service workers and the suffering of people in rural areas. He accused some PF rebel MPs of being greedy and selfish and not representing the people who voted them into power. He said PF MPs who claimed to have rebelled against him were not fighting him as an individual but the people who voted for them as their representatives. He further said that some PF MPs in Luapula Province were asked to campaign for President Rupiah Banda and hoped that they would be given jobs in Government but that they were later disappointed because President Banda had his own people he employed.

He said in the 2011 presidential and general elections, the PF would give chance to its members on the ground to select the people they wanted to represent them as MPs.
Sata said that the reason for visiting Luapula was to thank the people in the province for having voted for PF in the 2008 presidential by-elections.