 Just when political parties participating in the Kawata constituency parliamentally by election thought all was it and hit the ground running with campaigns, sadly they have to start afresh as the contender representing the United Progressive People, UPP Francis Rivenda, has given up the race before the 20th of January 2022. Mista Rivenda was full of confidence in scooping the seat which fell vacant following the death of 7 members of parliament leaving Mukandawiri. But Friday, 7th January 2022, Mista Rivenda announced that he could not proceed with the contest. Many I widely consulted with my family and I decided that I would draw. To understand the implications of his decision, we spoke to electoral expert McDonald Chepenzi who said the move will compel the Electoral Commission of Zambia to call for fresh nominations and prescribe the new debt for the election. 52 of the constitution of the Republic of Zambia. This article requires that new nominations are supposed to be done and fresh debt of the election is to be announced. This is the predicament now that the candidates that filed in will have to face. It means that they have to pay new nomination fees, they have to organize new supporters for them to be successful. Actually it's a new nomination that has just been triggered. I think it's very important for political parties and their candidates to be serious. It's not good to punish your fellow participants just because you are not ready and you are just a joker. Let's move away from comedian in the electoral process. It's an expensive process, a dedicated process and it should not be allowed people to just withdraw anyhow as they feel like. In this election, some political parties such as the Patriots for Economic Progress, PEP have been having challenges to memorize resources to conduct campaigns and resulted to asking for contributions from members of the general public and yet they will be compared to pay twice for nominations. One can only imagine the predicament. Certainly this scenario was witnessed in the August 12th general election and caused for electoral forms. Good morning ladies and gentlemen from the press. I would like to welcome you to the garden office of the president of the socialist party. This press briefing is going to be pretty short. It's about Kavwata and the happenings that are going on associated to the by elections. We are 19 days in the campaign period. We have only got 12 days to go. And so far information on the ground is that the socialist party candidate kumrit trefa ngandu is doing pretty well. And the kumrit is seated next to me. Our campaign has been the best organized and the reception of the people of Kavwata to his candidates has been very positive. Some three days ago we started receiving rumors that a candidate is going to withdraw. And that was worrisome. Yesterday indeed we saw a letter and this is already in the public domain that one of the candidates Vibanda Francis has withdrawn from this race. And the understanding of many people is also that these elections will be stopped or postponed because a candidate has withdrawn. In our opinion this is a misuse of clause 52 section 6 of our constitution. This clause was meant for calamities such as death of a candidate just to give a fair chance to the political parties that are participating. This clause was not meant for people that will come into the race and then resign expecting that new elections are going to be held. Our appeal is to the ECZ, the electoral commission of Zambia, that this issue should be treated differently. The campaign should go on if these elections are postponed it will set a terrible precedence for the democratic process in Zambia. Any candidate will wake up and say I'm not standing anymore, I'm withdrawing and that can go on and on. There will be no end to this. Kavwata should not set that precedence. The law should not be misused in any way. The Zambian electoral system deserves to have credibility. It has suffered for a long time and let Kavwata not be one of those that breaks it down. As I said again, this news we did receive some time back and they are quite disturbing allegations involving the UPND in this whole process. And those allegations are that the UPND engineered this resignation and this is serious. This story and these allegations would still doom the Zambian democrats. That story states that this resignation is induced because the UPND is having serious problems selling its candidate. And that they have lined up two candidates whose names we have been given to take over. So when this is postponed and it resumes it won't be the same candidate that the people of Kavwata have rejected. Again at this point would appeal to the investigative agencies to the anti-corruption commission would like to appeal to the police to get on this matter as quickly as possible. If these allegations are true, this is a crime being committed and we shouldn't allow it. We are going to engage the parties affected. We are going to engage the ECZ on this issue because this is an issue that touches all of us. The people of Kavwata have been often by not having a legislator for months now. The legal interests, narrow interests of political parties should not deny that constituents' legal or political representation. This is greediness at its waist and as a socialist party we are touched, we are moved by this situation, by this development. You may be asking why didn't we go straight to those institutions, why are we bringing this open? This is not an institutional issue, an organizational issue alone. This is a matter in public interest. There is no way we are going to appeal only to these institutions quietly. We are beginning the process informing you ladies and gentlemen from the press but also the people of Kavwata that this is what is happening. There is a possibility of your elections being postponed. Your constitutional right to have representation is going to be postponed and for what? For the narrow political interests of those in power. That's why we are bringing it out. We are going to follow it immediately, engage the different parties as alluded to. Our people on the ground are also following up as much as they can, get as much evidence as possible. The idea is to bring this to an end. With your help, your involvement, we should be able to create a better Zambia, better democratic processes for this country. The crime-like behavior that these allegations entail should be stopped and that should be done immediately. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.