Parties set up council to run Pact, says Kakoma

The Patriotic Front )PF) and the United Party for National Development (UPND) have set up an 18-man national governing council (NGC) to run the pact and identify a presidential candidate for the 2011 general elections.

UPND information and publicity chairperson Charles Kakoma announced June 9 saying that the council has equal representation from the two political parties.
“The national governing council will decide how the process involving the pact will move,” Kakoma said but added that it was too early for the council to pick a presidential candidate.
“We can’t pick a presidential candidate before we work on our strategies. We want to take a step at a time. We are still discussing on how to perfect the pact so that we remove the MMD, come 2011,” he said.

He said the pact will concentrate on strategising on how the two political parties can defeat the ruling MMD in the 2011 general elections. He explained that the working relationship by the two political parties is meant to improve the standard of living of the Zambian people.

“We want to ensure that we improve people’s lives through eradication of poverty, corruption and other vices. We want issues of strikes by nurses and doctors to be a thing of the past. We will take the MMD on and we will not disclose how this will be done. We want to keep the MMD itching. We can’t tell our enemies all our plans, we want to surprise them in 2011,” he said.

And commenting on concerns on whether the grassroot members in both political parties were consulted before coming up with a pact, Kakoma said the call for the alliance came from the people.

“It is actually the people at the grassroot level who have been calling for us to come together and defeat the MMD government. What the leaders in our parties did was to respond to their calls,” he said.