 The current Lord Shedding has highlighted serious weaknesses in the current administration's leadership that are now too evident to most of his years in opposition. And the early part of his presidency claiming that a lot of the challenges the country was facing were because of a lack of leadership. The recent admission by the Zesco board chairman that they misled the president has further shown the extent of the problem. Never in my even years have I seen an individual admit that they mislead the head of states and remain in their position. Despite his taking on of the blame, we know that the chairman is far removed from the day-to-day operations of Zesco. Which begs the question, was he too mislead by the management of Zesco? It is shocking that given the embarrassment that has befallen the president following his numerous comments, first on how he would end Lord Shedding prior to being elected and second that he had ended it within eight months of being in office, so many of the people who told him it was over remain in office. The list of people who would have mislead the president is endless. The minister of energy, the permanent secretary at the minister of energy, his advisors at state house and the entire Zesco senior management who are still in their positions. When one looks back regarding Zesco, it seems the president has been mislead for a long time. He claimed that Café Gorge Lower had been abandoned in 2019 and his government resuscitated it and he claimed that the financial problems related to other independent power producers had been resolved and yet this was far from the truth. The president even implied that they had now started exporting power which seemingly had never happened before until he got into office. This is either truly a lack of information or the president is a man who likes to rib where he did not so. Surely with all the intelligence and resources surrounding the president where is he getting this information that is tarnishing his presidency? The export of electricity did not start with the president or with his presidency nor did it start during the PF regime. This is something that has been obtaining from the time Zambia signed the power sharing agreement over 20 years ago. The current power crisis leaves many questions unanswered. This problem and the possibility of Lord Shading was known by engineers early in 2022. Hydrology and demand focus are things that have been done by Zesco for years. It would seem that individuals in the current government were so desperate to claim that Lord Shading had ended that they ignored all the warning signs. The current water levels of the dam show serious recklessness on the part of those who manage the electrical system. The Kareepa Dam was meant in part to provide storage of water to allow for continuous generation of electricity even in years when there was low revenue. Given what is pertaining today, the dam has now lost its storage capability as every year. The water that will flow into the dam will be used for generation in the current year and will in the foreseeable future lead to Lord Shading annually. To put this into perspective, in 2015, when Zesco decided to Lord Manage leading to eight hours of Lord Shading, the dam was just over 20% full. However, this time around, on January 1st, 2023, when Zesco announced that it would finally commence Lord Shading, the dam level was 0.83% rising from a low of 0.77%. On December 30th, 2022, while the use of the water in the Zambezi River is not solely on Zesco, this act of allowing it to get to this level without intervention is criminal. As stated earlier, this problem was known before and there are sessions by the board chairman that he should have been more vigilant with his hydrologists, implies that he was unaware and makes for very sad reading. The long 12-hour Lord Shading could have been averted by two to three-hour periods starting mid-year. In addition, earlier in the year 2022, the Zesco Managing Director claimed that Zambia had a surplus of over 1,000 megawatts and was defended this week by the board chairman that at the time they were sitting pretty shows a significant lack of understanding of electricity generation on the part of both senior officers. Energy experts were in shock when the Zesco MD made such a claim as it was known that there was insufficient water to produce that amount of energy, nor was the Cafua Gorge Law Project completed. Many watched the Zesco MD glots in front of the president at the meeting of Heads of Parasatos about how he had solved all of Zesco's problems and was the shining light at that meeting. Eight months on, it would appear that he lied his way through the gathering. One wonders why the president is failing to censure the Zesco MD. Is he a true embodiment of the extent of the president's compromise that he seems to fail to take corrective action against him? Zesco today, as we speak, is financially worse off than it was a year ago. And its tough numbers are significantly higher today than they were before president Ichile Mahasium office. The president has been employing all kinds of people, the senior government, in Zesco. All those who helped him are now in Zesco. While some might argue that this has no direct bearing on generation, the reality is that it does. More money spent on human resource affects what is available in the past to invest in new generation and reduces your ability to seek tariff increases based on efficiencies. And in its current form, Zesco has no capacity to solve Zambia's power problems as bankability for new projects will be impossible in the short to medium term. The president has even gone further to constitute a task force comprised of the same people who have created this unprecedented level of load shading. What will that achieve? I think it is basic logic that you cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created that problem. We have seen serious data and delay in the last 16 months regarding projects that had been started in the previous regime for reasons that are unclear resulting in missed opportunities and ultimate cost escalation. It is not a secret that the president is now making voters wonder about his ability to make big decisions. As we continue to speak about individuals remaining in their positions we are reminded that early in the president's term a director general of a key institution was accused of sharing images that were against the law. The images were clear enough to make an easy deduction on who the person in the images was. Alas, the president has failed to take action and that person remains in post. If we are to draw a parallel from the former president with his perceived love for fun and social engagement he was out ever decisive in making the decision to draw one of his ministers when images he made of him in a compromised manner. This president has failed to take any action. To add to the indecision it is no secret that the farmer input support program has been a disaster in the 2022-23 farming season with many areas still not having received inputs as of today. Again, everyone at minister of agriculture and all those involved have remained in their positions. The minister of health also continues to have its own share of problems with the minister weekend by a potential corruption scandal and inadequate medication in hospitals. And yet all we have seen is business as usual. As we speak the country is faced with a possible food shortage and we have seen the price of minimum increased to a high of 217 kwachas to a 25 kg bag of breakfast meal. The country is importing wheat for the first time in over 15 years. The drugs for treatment of food and mouth disease and contagious boba and pleural pneumonia in short supply putting livestock farming at high risk. These and many more truly begs the question what will it take for the president to act? At this point it is easy to deduce that the president is a very indecisive and compromised leader who cares less about the people of this country and is only interested in outsiders. He worries more about foreigners than he worries about his own people who voted for him. It is apparent from his lack of action that he is all back and no bites and that the Zambian people are in the long remaining three years filled with incompetence at the heart of government. While others have taken time to defend the president and allocate blame on those around him we in the citizen's first part are cognizant of the fact that the president is an appointing authority and therefore the people surrounding him are a reflection of himself so at the very east represent his aspirations and that will explain why most of them are still in their positions besides the market flows in their performance and at worst even embarrassing the president to the point where all the funny memes today is making a mockery of the president. Let's go on social media and see how they are making fun of him. It is really lower in the decorum of his office of president because he is a big talker he talks a lot and he acts less. President Tucker in the Hitchi level must learn from the experience others have who paid the ultimate price for holding on to questionable people and their inability to let them go when the writings were on the wall. Our commitment is to the citizens of this republic. Finally I want to advise that the citizens first is a progressive party that does not believe in making empty promises to the citizens but rather seeks to provide solutions that are transformational in nature. We are alive to the fact that empty rhetoric and baseless promises are what has led this country to where it is today. I would like to call upon the citizens of this country to start scrutinizing their leaders including those of us who are seeking to run for public office. If we had interrogated the current leadership enough and sought an explanation to the open statement of he will fix it. We would have avoided the current situation we are faced with today. And if he fails to fix the challenges and keeps on lamping the blame on the previous regime we shall certainly fix it through the balance. I also want to save notice on the naysayers that the citizens first is not an opposition party but a shadow government. A shadow government that is working on building and maintaining its state of readiness ahead of the 2026 travel type pause. Hours is not to oppose but to provide alternative solutions and the answers to the challenges that the country is faced with. Thank you and God bless our government.