Mumba Can’t Win 2016 Election – Kaingu

MMD vice-president for politics Michael Kaingu says the party’s leader Nevers Mumba cannot win the 2016 presidential election because he is surrounded by political failures like his spokesperson Muhabi Lungu.
But Lungu says Kaingu is a liar, who, together with Dora Siliya and Lucky Mulusa, is behind the crusade to undermine Mumba’s leadership of the MMD.
Kaingu told Joy FM in an interview aired yesterday on the station’s Tikambilane programme, that Mumba was not only a failed leader, but was also surrounded by people like Lungu, Scorpion Kadobi and Bowman Lusambo, who could not help him get to State House.
“If we allow president Mumba to continue, that definitely will be the end of MMD,” Kaingu said. “The president that we have, he is just at his home, making press statements. He is not a team leader.”
He said Mumba was busy flushing out of the party quality leaders such as Catherine Namugala and Maj Richard Kachingwe.
“We are seeing a president who is vindictive, we are seeing a president who is not interactive. That in itself is dangerous for the party,” Kaingu said. “A leader shouldn’t be very far from his people.”
Kaingu said being Mumba’s right-hand man, he had, to no avail, cautioned him against using unrecognised party structures such as Lusambo’s ‘Die-Hard’.
“You see, this president even plots against his own people,” he said.
Kaingu said they told Mumba that a time would come when party leaders like him would not stomach the insults that the people within the illegal party structures he was using were directing at them.
“They are not relevant in MMD… but these are the people he is using,” Kaingu said. “Who are the people with Nevers Mumba? Kadobi, Lusambo, Muhabi; who is Muhabi? What election has he won? If there are people who should deliver Nevers Mumba to State House, it is us.”
He said the problem in Zambia was that if somebody talked too much, they were perceived to be intelligent.
“We will not accept this time to be hoodwinked, somebody just to come from nowhere and just tell us stories,” Kaingu said. “Dr Mumba doesn’t own the party, and that is one of the biggest problems. He has shown that it is him and it is him alone… even if he refuses, we will go to the convention. Where we have reached, the die is cast.”
Kaingu claimed that the owners of the party wanted to go to the convention.
“Even in Parliament, they want to go to a convention because they are fatigued,” said Kaingu. “Can MMD form government in 2016? The answer is ‘yes and no’. In our current form, we should just forget. If we can transform ourselves, yes… in fact, if we go on like this, the PF will still bounce back. We need to find a servant leadership.”
But Lungu, who spoke on the programme to rebut what Kaingu earlier said, called Kaingu a liar and hoped he would face him one day.
“I am sorry that I have to respond to things that are blatant lies,” Lungu said. “When he says, ‘who is Muhabi Lungu?’ The whole vice-president can have the audacity to come here and start telling lies…. Can you imagine that he can come here and start saying what he is saying, me being useless? He mentioned Kadobi, myself and Lusambo, all the people who have been persistently and openly defending the president. What does he want the president to do?”
He said Kaingu one day threatened Mumba that if he would allow Namugala in the party, he would resign. He also alleged that Kaingu championed the hounding out of Maj Kachingwe from the party.
Lungu also claimed Kaingu was against Kapembwa Simbao taking over as party national secretary and that he personally called him to his house to ask him whether he was interested in taking over as national secretary.
Lungu said the idea of an extraordinary convention was just being championed by four leaders within the 62-member national executive committee and that clearly the odds were against them as most of the provinces had turned down the suggestion.
Lungu said if Kaingu thought the leadership barometer was about winning a parliamentary seat in a rural area like Mwandi, he should come and contest Lusaka Central and see whether he was going to go anywhere.
“If my objective was winning a seat, I could have gone to Lundazi…. If Mr Kaingu wants to take me to court or if he wants to do anything he wants to do, I am ready to face him. I am completely and totally annoyed,” said Lungu. “That is the problem with my vice-president; he doesn’t take advice very well.”