I won't go to court over constitution, says Levy

I won't go to court over constitution, says Levy
By George Chellah
Thursday April 26, 2007 [04:00]

PRESIDENT Mwanawasa yesterday said he would not go to court over the constitution-making process but his critics should go there and get judicial interpretation. And President Mwanawasa challenged the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to prove their capability if they wanted him to be sympathetic with their call for financial assistance because he was not prepared to throw good money after the bad.

During the swearing-in ceremony at State House of the newly appointed information minister Mike Mlongoti, gender in development minister Patricia Mulasikwanda and lands deputy minister Nassim Hamir not to take oaths as a formality, President Mwanawasa said his letter to the Non-governmental Organisation Coordinating Council (NGOCC) on the constitution-making process contained hard facts of law.

"A few days ago I issued a letter, which I have written to the NGOCC which was misrepresented as amounting to me calling them stubborn. That letter discussed the law, discussed the constitution, discussed how the constitution should be amended. Those were hard facts of law," President Mwanawasa said.

“Up to now, I do not think that I misdirected myself. We had a statement immediately thereafter from Oasis, that ‘we will soon answer what the President has said. The answer was not given. What we heard afterwards, four days after was that, ‘no, we are having a funeral we are in bereavement so we can’t talk.We have got all the answers, we have all the answers to President Mwanawasa we will answer him.’ I don’t know how long it took them to mourn. I am a lawyer myself so if a lawyer dies, I am also in bereavement as a lawyer. I am able to make various statements, why can’t they answer?”

President Mwanawasa further complained of people calling him names over the constitution-making process.

“Instead we are having people crying out, calling me names saying ‘the constitution must be amended before 2008. I want to be on the side of those who are right. I will not be on the side of the government because the government is wrong,” he said. “Please I have thrown a challenge, that challenge is simple, it does not lie in you throwing blows at me or calling me names. Show that I am wrong and the public will hear you.

“I have said if we cannot convince each other, if you feel that we cannot convince each other go to court. I am not going to court, they say uupamfiwe ee ulwa necibi it’s them who are suffering from diarrhoea so they have to go to court and get judicial interpretation. But otherwise let them not confuse the people.”

And President Mwanawasa urged Mlongoti, Mulasikwanda and Hamir not to take oaths as a formality.

“The intention of these oaths is for you to publicly commit yourself to be faithful, to be sincere to the people of Zambia. You are swearing before me. I represent the people of Zambia. Therefore these oaths are not oaths just to me personally but to the entire Zambia,” he said.

He advised the three ministers not to hesitate to pass right decisions that might look unpopular.

“The three ministers I want to caution you, when you are appointed minister, there is a tendency by certain people to always try to do things which will make them not unpopular, to be pleasing to the general public,” President Mwanawasa said. “Now your function is to take decisions, which are pleasing to the people of Zambia. But if it is necessary, do not be hesitant to pass decisions, which today might look unpopular because at the end of the day you want people to come and support and praise you that you are the leader.

Not a situation where people, your children, your children’s children....posterity will condemn you as having caused the perpetual difficulty. So if it means cleaning the city of Lusaka because there are structures which have been built not according to the law... because instead of people respecting the streets as places where people and vehicles will move, they turn it into a market place. If it means you removing them making the city clean, you do it. That action may today look unpopular but later when the street is looking clean they will praise you.”

President Mwanawasa said the city of Lusaka was currently looking very ugly.
“And for those who are insincere, they blame the leaders of this country for the state of affairs. So it is important that those decisions must be taken. It could be constitutional review, you have taken the oath just like I took the oath to protect the constitution and the laws of Zambia,” President Mwanawasa said. He urged the new ministers to acquaint themselves with the provisions of the constitution in to avoid making illegal decisions.

President Mwanawasa advised Hamir not to join the scam at the Ministry of Lands.
“There is a lot of scam, don’t join. You should be a solution,” he said.

And President Mwanawasa advised the new ACC chairperson justice Valentine Chileshe to remove the stigma associated with the fight against corruption.

“My Lord, Mr Justice Chileshe and you my friend Mbikusita-Lewanika, I want you to appreciate the fact that the position to which you have ascended is very important to our national development. We have received massive donor confidence because of our fight against corruption. This is a very important programme. You must remove the stigma, which unfortunately has come to exist that certain suspected criminals, plunderers are being targeted; they are not guilty...that we find it for political expedience to prosecute them,” President Mwanawasa.

“You will find Honourable Chileshe that my government does not believe in vengeance. My government is governed by the rule of law. Government shall be of laws rather than of men. So I will need you as a first step, you and your fellow commissioners to discuss and find ways by which the ACC can be improved.”

He said he was not at all satisfied with the performance of the ACC.
“Now we, the government set up the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) and the money laundering unit. You will need to find out as to why we have more confidence in DEC than the ACC? It means that there is something wrong in ACC, so you sit down and find out which is the way forward,” President Mwanawasa said.

“Then after that I will like you all the commissioners to sit down with senior officers at the ACC to discuss their performance in the partnership of Zambia. It is not good at all.”

President Mwanawasa complained that cases were taking so long to prosecute.
“When I was a lawyer, when I was appearing before you my Lord, both when you were a magistrate and judge you recall that there was never a case which took five years for an accused to be put on his defence. But it’s happening now. It means that because the case has been delayed...by the time you take a case to court or by the time you lead evidence either the crucial witnesses will have died or their memories will have been damned,” President Mwanawasa said.

“And all it requires to get an acquittal is a clever lawyer and he will ask very nasty questions and then witness will just be scratching his head. And sometimes you say it’s a slip of the tongue, the tongue is safely anchored there in the mouth. But because you have kept too long...and then the other development is that because of the time it takes to prosecute these cases, the witnesses find that it’s unfashionable to give evidence against the suspects because the suspects are heroes.

“So they don’t want to be blamed. So the evidence, which they will give in court, will be different from the statement which they gave at the police station. Now that is the delay caused by your commission or the law enforcement agencies. But there are cases and there are many where adjournments are caused by the courts. They will allow adjournments on flimsy of excuses, sometimes it’s they themselves. The Honourable Chief Justice is not here but I am sure he will get this message. I want him to sit down with some senior judges and find out how they are going to deal with these cases.”

President Mwanawasa also said the prisons were very full of people waiting for trial on murder and other cases for which bail was not available.

“Now because of that, justice is not being administered. Very soon I shall be signing a statutory instrument in which I have to commute the death penalty to life or terms of imprisonment and some will be given terms of imprisonment, they will be leaving the prison,” President Mwanawasa said.

“That is because a situation has arisen in the prison, it’s so crowded... it’s so inhumane. So we want the judiciary to play their tango, law enforcement agencies will play their tango, the central government will play its tango and so we expect the judiciary to play its tango. They shouldn’t regard themselves as enemies of the executive because we are in the same boat to deliver development.”

President Mwanawasa said judicial development was national development. “I know that finances have been insufficient to address the many challenges, which the ACC faces. But you will find that those challenges go beyond lack of funds. What I was telling the Minister of Finance the other day is that, ‘if the ACC want me to be sympathetic for their calls of financial assistance then they will have to prove that they are capable. I am not prepared to throw good money after bad’,” he said.

President Mwanawasa praised new deputy Secretary to the Cabinet Likolo Ndalamei for bringing sanity to the Zambia National Commercial Bank where he was managing director.

“At a very difficulty time, you were able to bring sanity to that bank to an extent where a good section of our community felt that it was wrong to sell so many shares to a foreign investor. I am glad that you have accepted my invitation to serve government in the position of deputy secretary to Cabinet in economic and development affairs,” President Mwanawasa said.

“We have so many challenges, we expect that you will assist government in finding answers to the various economic challenges, development challenges because the people of Zambia are in a hurry to develop. When you hear them shout abuse at you don’t think that they hate you, no they don’t hate you. On the contrary they will like to see development. I would like to say with pride that we have significant achievements over the past five and half years.

“Those achievements have been made through hard work through sacrifice, but when we took over, things were so bad but you don’t expect them to improve overnight. There are a lot people who haven’t benefited yet from what we are doing. So our effort at the moment is to ensure that all benefit, is to ensure that we remove poverty because poverty is a hindrance to development.”