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LUSAKA Zambia (Xinhua) --
Zambian President-elect Edgar Lungu was on
Tuesday inaugurated for his five year mandated in office during
a grand ceremony held in Lusaka, the country’s capital.
Lungu, who was
declared winner of last month’s tightly contested elections, was
inaugurated during the ceremony held at the packed National
Heroes Stadium.
He was inaugurated
alongside Vice-President Inonge Wina who was his running mate in
the August 11 polls.
The ceremony,
witnessed by presidents from the region such as Zimbabwe’s
Robert Mugabe and Botswana’s Ian Nkhama as well as
representatives of other countries, saw a huge number of people
turning up to witness the inauguration.
China was
represented by President Xi Jinping’s Special Envoy, vice
chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference, Ma Biao.
In his inaugural
address, Lungu commended Zambians for giving him and the ruling
Patriotic Front (PF) another mandate to be in charge of the
affairs of the country and promised that he will not let them
down.
“You have placed on
my shoulders a huge burden of responsibility and indeed I will
ensure that at no time should you feel that you misplaced your
confidence in electing me. I won’t let you down. Even for those
who didn’t vote for me I won’t let you down,” he said.
His party, Lungu
said, will continue on the same path of development agenda
embarked upon during its first five years in office, and that he
will push the frontiers of the country’s national agenda.
Lungu also promised
to establish a Commission of Inquiry to establish what caused
violence that erupted in some parts of the country after the
results were announced.
Zimbabwean President
Mugabe, who spoke on behalf of the other leaders, congratulated
Zambia for maintaining its tradition of holding peaceful and
democratic elections.
The 92-year-old
Zimbabwean leader said election observer missions have already
affirmed that the elections were free and fair and that Lungu’s
victory was the “people’s victory”.
Lungu was supposed
to have been inaugurated seven days after the August 11 polls,
but the ceremony was suspended after the country’s main
opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema petitioned the presidential
results in the Constitutional Court, citing malpractices in the
vote count.
The petition was
however dismissed by the court. Lungu polled 1,860,877 votes
while Hichilema polled 1,760,347 votes.
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