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Parliament speaker urges opposition party to accept Zambian leader

Xinhua, October 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

Speaker of the Zambian parliament on Friday urged the main opposition political party to accept that the country had a duly elected president instead of living in denial.

Speaker Patrick Matibini said the United Party for National Development (UPND) was wasting its time by refusing to accept President Edgar Lungu as duly elected president of the country after the August 11 general elections.

Matibini was reacting to opposition lawmakers during a parliamentary session who kept on referring to the Zambian leader as Mr. Lungu instead of his official address His Excellency President Lungu.

The speaker said if there was no president in the country, parliament would not have been sitting since all the lawmakers swore allegiance to the president on their first day, adding that the opposition party needed to accept that in any election there were winners and losers and move on.

The UPND has refused to accept Lungu as winner of the polls, claiming the vote was stolen from its leader Hakainde Hichilema.

The party's plans to have the results overturned have failed after the Constitutional Court threw out its petition. It is currently pursuing the matter in the Supreme Court. Endit