MMD national secretary Elizabeth Chitika says continued infighting in the MMD is not about the constitution but the dislike for Nevers Mumba by detractors.
Chitika told The Mast that MMD detractors should give Mumba a chance to enjoy the MMD presidency which he has failed to since his election in 2012.
Chitika vowed that the MMD would not hold a convention to elect another leader until 2026.
“The problems in the MMD are not about the [party] constitution because the detractors know the truth. They know we abide by the constitution of the party because we believe and respect our party constitution. That is what has taken us this far. The issue in MMD is Dr Mumba. They just don’t like him and we are talking about a person who has been in public life for 44 years. A person that has built his own brand and this is the brand that they want to destroy. Now they are calling him a dictator when he is not,” she noted.
“Mr (Gaston) Sichilima who is running an illegal entity called Operation Save MMD, what is he trying to save which he did not save? And I have reported Mr Schilima because he is posing as leader of a parallel organ which is non-existent in our constitution. And I was shocked when he was summoned by police, he was shivering. A big man like that when he was just asked two questions and police has told us they will call him again. They want to find out all the radio stations he has been to to defame the president. We are not going to a convention anytime soon. Dr Mumba is not a former president. He is an elected president until 2026 and the national committee is the one that will decide on the date.”
Chitika said it was difficult to understand why “the enemies of the party” assumed that Mumba was the wrong person only two weeks into office as MMD leader.
“They believed that there were other people that were more MMD than him,” she said. “We are talking about people that are not even his match. People that have nothing to show to the nation.”
Chitika warned that the party executive would not be swayed into having an illegal convention before 2025 to elect another leader as Mumba’s tenure had not come to an end.
“Unlike in other parties, in MMD the president of the party is born out of a convention and president Mumba’s presidency came about because of the 2012 convention and when it was about 2016, he had only done four years and these our colleagues who want to grab leadership from Dr Mumba came and said, ‘we need to go to the convention because we are going to the general elections. But we said the MMD presidency is not tied to the national elections. We told them that president Mumba had only done four years. ‘What do we do with the remaining one year?’. We said we needed Dr Mumba’s tenure of office to come to an end. That was supposed to be in 2017 May. They did not believe us because they had an agenda,” she said. “So they disrupted Dr Mumba’s presidency by one year. We went to court. What dignified people do. We were in court for three and half years. And the court declared Dr Mumba as party president and rendered their Kabwe convention as null and void and their positions. That is why we got the party back. So we organised a virtual convention. It was controlled from the United States and we just had screens. All the delegates for Lusaka were in Bonanza [Resort] and all the delegates in the provinces were using the screens and then there was disruption where they said there was a court injunction against the holding of the convention but in the provinces they continued and by midnight that day, everything was done and a new national executive committee emerged.”
Chitika said the MMD should actually be commended that it adhered to holding of conventions as and when due.
“It is not easy to organise a convention. Have you seen the way the PF is struggling?” said Chitika.
“They told us that the convention would be in June, today is August. MMD has managed to organise its conventions.” This is contained in a report published by the Mast.