BELOW IS THE FULL TEXT OF MY SPEECH AT THE PRESS BRIEFING WHERE I ANNOUNCED THE FORMATION OF THE RAINBOW PARTY, IN LUSAKA ON TUESDAY 16TH DCEMBER 2014 AT THE MULUNGUSHI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTRE Country women and men Comrades Friends Members of the press Ladies and Gentlemen We all meet here today to witness a historic event in our country. This event has been prompted and driven by your demand in the past years about the political direction and future of our country. Your anxieties were heightened with what we have seen going on in the PF and other political parties. Your demand has been very simple. You wanted a new political party which will be different from all the existing political parties. You wanted a political party whose constitution and manifesto would enhance democratic governance, high economic growth, reduce poverty amongst the majority of our people and equitable access to economic opportunities. In this regard, such a political party would be the party of the popular masses, intellectuals, the youth, workers, women, traditional authorities, farmers, religious groupings, business community and all men and women of good will. You did not want to see and belong again to a political party which is owned by individuals, a political party which is regionally and ethnically inclined or dominated and devoid of clear ideological direction. The common features of the existing political parties is that they serve only as vehicles for capturing State power in order to foster a parasitic agenda of the elite in our country. The political party we are announcing today is owned by yourselves. You are the founders of this party. You the same founders have tasked me to lead this party, a task which I hereby accept with humility and profound gratitude. I, together with the leadership of our party shall serve as your servants to enable us to achieve the goals which we shall set out. Our country has since independence attempted to achieve high economic growth in order to eradicate poverty and inequality amongst its citizens. However, it is saddening to note that 50 years on 60% of Zambians continue to live in abject poverty and squalor. They still have difficulties feeding and clothing themselves with limited access to basic education and health care services. The levels of inequality in Zambia are equally alarming. The lowest 10% social-economic group consumes a bare 1.5% of the GDP whereas the top 10% elite takes up 47.4%. These disparities are unacceptable as they pose a political risk to our country. We would like to see Zambia benefit from the current global boom in commodity prices and increase direct foreign investment. None of the current crop of political parties has the leadership with the capacity, commitment and appropriate ideological understanding to effectively tackle these fundamental issues. The Zambian worker who toils to produce the wealth of this country is today worse off than he/she was decades ago. The youth of the country are largely unemployed with deem prospects for ever earning a decent living. The majority of our women are still marginalized in many areas of their social and economic lives. The traditional authority has been disenfranchised and hence preventing it from playing a significant role in the socio-economic development of the country. The church as the bedrock of our moral and spiritual life has not received sufficient co-operation and support from those in authority. The political elite of the country has become the worst enemy of the people and survives for the sole purpose of enriching itself. In this regard, your demand for a new political party, one which has a transformational, revolutionary agenda to restore the Zambian dream through the creation of an economy owned by its workers, youth, women, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, traditional authority, religious groups and individual citizens has today been born out of this noble gathering. This party shall be known as the RAINBOW PARTY. I THANK YOU ALL AND MAY GOD BLESS OUR PARTY AND OUR COUNTRY
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:58:59 +0000
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