By AUSTIN KALUBA –
LAST week the wolf pack was at it again by loudly and spitefully questioning President Edgar Lungu’s holiday in Nyimba.
The know-it-all critics said this was not the right time for President Lungu to go for a holiday since the country was beset by a number of problems.
Little do these gentlemen and women know that presidents who are human beings like any other mortal go for holidays whether the country is plagued by problems or not.
Let us take the most important political leader in the world, the American President who happens to be Barack Obama.
He  is usually on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, but like Lungu still attends to the duties of the Oval Office.
President Obama and his family enjoying their annual summer trek to Martha’s Vineyard is even covered extensively in the press.
In the second republic the first republican president Kenneth Kaunda was famously known to go for a working holiday to Mfuwe.
One thing critics of President Lungu’s Nyimba holiday should know is that throughout the world Presidents don’t get vacations per se — they just get a change of scenery.
The former American President, the late Ronald Reagan frequently went to his ranch in Santa Barbara, California but remained in touch with his presidential duties.
How come here in Zambia some people think the President is some superman who can do such a hectic job without taking some time off.
Some are even questioning the expenses of the outing arguing that it is misuse of tax payers money.
Do they know that for an American President, 200 people accompany him on vacation — including White House aides, Secret Service agents, military advisers, and experts in communications and transportation — to ensure that, while on vacation, the president can do nearly everything he could accomplish in Washington.
In short, what a president does when he moves from his traditional office to a holiday spot is carrying his work place with him.
The American President, like his counterparts elsewhere, continues to receive daily intelligence and national security briefings while on vacation.
He also continues to tape weekly radio broadcasts, hold news conferences, attend political fundraisers and occasionally, as President Lungu did in Nyimba hold a few party functions.
In short holidays don’t stop presidents from making major decisions.
For example, Kaunda banned the United Progressive Party (UPP) of the late Simon Kapwepwe when he was on a working holiday in Mfuwe.
In short, a holiday can provide a president with that most precious and rare of commodities in the State House Office: time to relax and think — including time to think about how to deal with a crisis in his country.