Bishop  Paul Mususu says President Edgar Lungu and the Patriotic Front do not love Zambia as evidenced by their poor management of the country’s affairs. Bishop Mususu, who recently defended President Lungu and urged those criticising him to stop ‘insulting’ the country’s leadership, however said in an interview last Friday that he was now disappointed that the Head of State was failing to address issues that nearly cost him an election in January. He said anybody who loves Zambia should be trying to keep the economy from getting into deeper problems.

“Worse still, this current borrowing is on a high percentage and yet there other institutions that we can borrow money from at a cheaper rate. Do these people love the country? That’s the question I have and I don’t think anybody doing that kind of thing is doing a favour to this country.

The President and the PF don’t love this country,” he said in an interview in Lusaka. Bishop Mususu said instead of controlling the heavy external borrowing, President Lungu and the PF had gone on rampage to indebt the country.  “Just going by example, what we have been through as a country under HIPC, anybody who loves this country should be trying to either maintain that or refrain from getting deeper.

We have had three Eurobonds now and we were used as an example in Greece. That’s so painful that in the whole world, they pick a country like Zambia. If I was the finance minister or indeed if I was the president, that’s the big thing that I would first tame because you are being pointed at, that you are doing a wrong thing,” he cautioned.

Bishop Mususu said Zambia needs a leadership that can rejuvenate the economy and give citizens hope.  “Personally, I am disappointed and looking forward [to some change], I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel. To continue the status quo has really dampened our spirit as Zambians; it seems that the PF are not seeing what Zambians are seeing, they are not scratching where it’s itching. So I think the economy is at the lowest ebb,” he said.

Bishop Mususu said President Lungu should have drawn a lesson from his slender electoral victory in January to address issues of poverty and the declining economy. “If I was in President Lungu’s shoes, the very first thing I would have been addressing is the very one which nearly cost him the election, namely the economy. I want to say I am really amazed and disappointed that the first appointment President Lungu made was to retain [Alexander] Chikwanda as finance minister, who really got this country to its knees,” he said. “Up to now, I fail to understand why Chikwanda should be maintained as finance minister.

He should have given him another position and if the PF don’t have a suitable candidate to run the Ministry of Finance, they would have done what [Levy] Mwanawasa did, to go to [Ng’andu] Magande and bring him in. What we need is to bring the economic resolutions in our country.”  Bishop Mususu said one big mistake the PF made was to choose to bite more than they could chew by recalling all diplomats, rebasing the currency and even creating new districts at the same time.

 “I mean these issues are a major shift in the economy and they needed to scatter them. At the rate we are going, the economic advisors to President Lungu have misplaced priorities. We appreciate the roads that they are doing but there are key areas in my view that need to be addressed,” said Bishop Mususu. “At the present moment, President Lungu’s lack of political will to fix the economy is dampening me, unless quick action is made, and made like yesterday. We have been waiting and waiting, notwithstanding the 90 days that they told us.”