UPND To Block Lungu Nomination For 2021

United Party for National Development (UPND) Lusaka Province Chair Obvious Mwaliteta has pledged that his party will file an injunction to block President Lungu from registering his presidential nomination papers in 2021.

In an interview on Sunday Mr Mwaliteta said the decision was in response to President Lungu’s disregard for the 2016 Constitutional Court ruling which instructed minsters to pay back salaries and allowances accrued after Parliament was officially dissolved.

“We are demanding for the Republican President, Edgar Chagwa Lungu to resign. He should resign because he has abrogated the Constitution of Zambia. The presidency is there to protect the Constitution but here is a President who abrogated the Constitution by allowing ministers to stay in office when they were not supposed to. And, if he is not going to resign, we will petition his nominations next year,” Mwaliteta said,

The opposition figure added that the president’s recent u-turn on ministerial salaries was laughable, and that such a prominent legal figure as Mr Lungu should have upheld the court’s decision from the beginning. 

“This is a resident who allowed ministers not to pay back allowances and salaries illegally accrued when they stayed in office and later u-turned and told them to pay back,” he said.