VICE-President George Kunda has said Catholic priests have joined the tirade of insulting President Rupiah Banda, going against the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Church about forgiveness and reconciliation.

Featuring on a live programme on Sunday evening on Monze's Sky FM radio, Vice-President Kunda said it was saddening that the Catholic Church and its priests had engaged in what he termed as insulting President Banda and his office at the expense of preaching forgiveness and reconciliation.

“The Catholic Church is here, we have to practice forgiveness in accordance with the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. This should also apply to priests. You know in the Catholic Church there are some priests who have joined the tirade of insulting, even insulting me and insulting the President, some priests, individual priests,” Vice-President Kunda said. “I don't believe that it is the policy of the Catholic Church but let us practice forgiveness. The forgiveness should start from our priests, our clergy, we would like to work with the Church."

He said the Catholic priests should be role models in ensuring unity and forgiveness in the nation.

“But now if the priests start insulting political leaders, you want us to start reacting to them politically? We have in the past ignored these statements, which come from Ndola priests, from certain categories of priests in the Catholic Church. Let us be forgiving each other. We have so many Catholics in our government there are so many Catholics in the Parliament, there are so many Catholics in Cabinet so we are all Zambians. Let us practice forgiveness instead of fuelling confusion. And that is my appeal to all priests in this country, all the pastors and as we support the declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation and we are passionate about this," Vice-President Kunda said.
He claimed that UPND president Hakainde Hichilema was being used by PF president Michael Sata to propel him Sata into government at the expense of UPND.

He claimed that Hichilema was also perpetrating confusion in the UPND with the help of Sata.
He said there was a big problem, which was boiling and UPND was on the brink of collapse, citing Namwala member of parliament Major Robbie Chizyuka's utterances as an indication that people had not accepted the pact.

On the media, Vice-President Kunda said in Zambia there was a particular newspaper, in apparent reference to The Post, which printed insults and always attacked President Banda.

He said there was need to discourage that because such media institutions had gone against ethics and were looking for trouble.

“We have a lot of laws, under the current statutes on which we can clamp down on the media but we are democrats. But this idea of insulting the president all the time people don't like that. There are criminal libel laws which we have never invoked at least during our time here under the current President. You see people of Zambia are not interested in reading insults every day so people in the media should exercise restraint. These radio stations can cause a lot of damage.
They can lead to genocide, newspapers can cause chaos so we must be responsible in the manner we report the affairs of the country. People are going about in peace doing their daily business but why create tension, why create trouble?" asked Vice-President Kunda.