UPND Deputy Spokesperson Elvis Nkandu says the ruling party won’t make new promises until it has fulfilled most of the ones it already made.
Nkandu claims that the UPND has already completed 80 per cent of the promises it made during its campaign.
This comes after Socialist Party leader Fred M’membe posted on Facebook, Thursday, saying that nothing has improved since UPND came into power.
“Nothing is working since UPND was elected, tapali! $1 ~ K28.89 What happened to Hakainde Hichilema’s 14hrs promise?” M’membe wrote.
Responding to M’membe in an interview, Nkandu said the government had delivered on many of its promises.
“A lot of things that we promised the Zambian people have been fulfilled and I always say that 80 per cent of the promises have been fulfilled, that is a distinction on its own and obviously the Zambian people had given us a mandate of five years, we cannot start promising people now until our mandate expires because what if we start promising people something that we may do in 2027 and yet those things will be done between now and August next year? So we can’t start promising people anything until we do what we promised, until we make sure that a lot of them have been fulfilled. So, us, we are not in opposition who can now start promising people, no, we promised our people what we are supposed to do in five years and I know that it is not everything that has been done, that’s why I am saying 80 per cent of the things that we promised our people have been done,” he said.
“And I always indicate that this is not an activity my friend, fulfilling promises is not an activity, it is a process and the process is still ongoing and we are going to make sure that a lot of the promises we are going to move from 80 per cent to another level. The Zambian people are even lucky that they have a government that is accountable to its promises. Where we are coming from people could promise without even fulfilling not even one but I think for us, we are very accountable, the things that we had promised our people, we are saying 80 per cent has been done and we are now looking forward to seeing that the 20 per cent that has remained is also fulfilled. So not until then, then we’ll be able to start promising other things when we start the campaigns. Right now, we are busy trying to fulfil the promises that we had promised our people”.
Nkandu also addressed M’membe’s comments about the economy and the exchange rate.
He said that right after President Hichilema won the election, the Kwacha actually got stronger.
“What M’membe needs to understand is the fact that when it was pronounced, when we just got into office the Kwacha gained, you know that but it is something that people don’t want to talk about. Just when Hakainde was pronounced winner, the Kwacha gained, now when we came into office what we expected to see is not what we saw. The way we anticipated the economy, I think it was beyond what we had anticipated. The way we anticipated the economy is not the way we found it, it was beyond what we had anticipated. So we started by first to bury that ditch so that it becomes to a level where we can now start building. So, that has wasted much of the time that we needed to grow this economy. You can imagine this economy was growing at -2.8 per cent, so you need first to grow it from the negative to zero per cent, from zero now you start going up, today we are able to say we are growing at four per cent, there is a lot that has been done,” said Nkandu.
