Maravi

Kaande committed a prosecutable offence – Chongwe

Kaande committed a prosecutable offence – Chongwe
Written by Chibaula Silwamba in Mtenguleni, Chipata

LUSAKA lawyer Dr Rodger Chongwe has charged that MMD deputy national secretary Jeff Kaande committed a prosecutable offence and any Zambian can take legal action against him.

Commenting on Kaande's decision in November last year to write to then home affairs permanent secretary Susan Sikaneta to quickly process payments for food suppliers whom the government owed some money because they were pledging to financially support the ruling MMD, Dr Chongwe said Kaande had contravened the Zambian constitution and could be prosecuted over that offence.

"Any interested Zambian, who wishes to, can take legal action against Mr Kaande," said Dr Chongwe in an interview on Friday. "This is against Article One of our Constitution which states that Zambia shall be a unilateral state and multiparty. Now once you begin writing to government and that government is the government of your own political party and you say, 'consider these people as our party people,' you are actually killing the spirit of the Constitution."

He said Kaande's behaviour brings about partisanship in the civil service whereby the civil service would only be giving tenders to ruling party members hence disadvantaging other people who did not belong to the ruling party or those who were non-partisan.

"That is an offence because it is inconsistent with our supreme law, the Constitution of Zambia. What I should say is that Mr Kaande, if that is what he did and he has admitted...that is wrong. He has admitted, but he has to go further and apologise to the people of Zambia," Dr Chongwe said. "This is not a one-party state. We ceased to be a one-party state on 30th September in 1990 and through legislation on 4th December 1990; we are a multi party state. We founded the MMD as a movement to introduce multiparty democracy."

He said it was unfortunate that senior MMD officials were bringing back the spirit of the one-party state.

"The behaviour of Mr Kaande is contrary to the spirit of us, who started the party, which is the Movement for Multiparty Democracy and not the movement for going back to the one party. That is an offence against our Constitution," said Dr Chongwe.

According to correspondence obtained by The Post, Kaande in November last year requested Sikaneta to pay over K1 billion to seven food suppliers that pledged financial support to the ruling party.

The documents revealed that the figures for Liki Enterprise on Kaande's list was inflated by over K380 million while two other suppliers were not owed anything by the Ministry of Home Affairs although Kaande stated that they were owed K50 million each.

In his letter dated 11th November 2008 to Sikaneta on the MMD letterhead, Kaande requested her to facilitate the payments according to what they had discussed earlier.

"List of companies pledging to support the party," read Kaande's letter in part. "Please consider assisting the companies below as discussed: - (1) Sunlight Estates - 300,000,000 (2) Dakwa General Dealers- 291,000,000 (3) Mavin Marketing - 130,000,000 (4) Miyele Enterprise - 95,000,000 (5) Liki Enterprise-400,000,000 (6) Bangosho Enterprise-50,000,000 (7) Mark Marketing-50,000,000. Total 1,025,000,000."

When contacted for comment on Monday, Sikaneta confirmed having received Kaande's letter but referred all queries to the current permanent secretary because she was no longer in charge at Ministry of Home Affairs.

Kaande later, in response to people that were condemning him for his action, warned that he would reprimand the seven suppliers for inflating amounts of money owed to them by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Kaande said he and the MMD had learnt a lesson not to believe cadres on face value.

Kaande said he did not inflate the figures but that MMD cadres themselves had given him figures that were higher than what was in the records at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Labels: CORRUPTION, FOOD, JEFF KANDE, MMD, ROGER CHONGWE, SUSAN SIKANETA

posted by MrK @ 11:36 AM