Maravi

Unyielding defence of a lazo

Unyielding defence of a lazo
By Editor
Sun 15 Nov. 2009, 04:00 CAT

Rupiah Banda and his servants have been giving many conflicting reasons for their refusal to appeal against the acquittal of Frederick Chiluba. The first reason they gave was that for the Task Force prosecutors to appeal Chiluba’s acquittal, express permission from the Director of Public Prosecutions was required.

This reason was highly discredited when a precedent was produced in which judge Mwanamwambwa made it very clear that no such new authority from the Director of Public Prosecutions was needed by the prosecutors to appeal.

After this, they tried to argue that actually the Task Force prosecutors had ignored the Director of Public Prosecutions’ orders not to appeal and purported to act in his name. When this lie was exposed and denounced because at no time did the Task Force prosecutors ever ignore the Director of Public Prosecutions’ orders or purport to act in his name, they resorted to one lie after another.

They then came up with another reason. They started to say there were no grounds of appeal. But this line was also totally discredited because even the Law Association of Zambia made an observation that there were adequate or sufficient grounds for appeal.

When all these flimsy attempts to defend the indefensible failed, they started a new line. Mike Mulongoti told Radio Mano that convicting Chiluba would have been too expensive for the nation. Mulongoti very insensitively declared that some people should be able to go to jail while others remain. Which people should go to jail? And which people should remain? Mulongoti clearly demonstrated the government’s complicity in Chiluba’s acquittal.

Rupiah, not to be outdone, joined Mulongoti’s senseless attempts to justify the acquittal during the Kasama by-election when he said Chiluba’s acquittal brought relief because he would have been miserable if he had been convicted.
These careless statements coming from Rupiah and Mulongoti caused them a lot of embarrassment. They have realised that our people were not impressed.

Today they have changed their tune and want to attack those who have been prosecuting with lies. Rupiah is saying that he does not support the appeal against Chiluba’s acquittal because the lawyers who were prosecuting the case are selfish people who just want to make money. He says it will be unwise for him to say to the same lawyers “go ahead and prosecute” and then come and lose again another US $13 million just for the sake...

According to Rupiah, the lawyers who prosecuted Chiluba are liars because they failed to finish the case in a short time so that they can make more money. This is how shameless and disgraceful Rupiah is becoming. He is attacking people he knows are not going to attack him back. Rupiah is doing this using obvious lies to justify a criminal decision he has taken to protect Chiluba and let him go scot-free.

There is a desperation in the way Rupiah is behaving. Against the advice of well-meaning people, including ourselves, Rupiah decided to embrace Chiluba’s criminality hoping that it would win him political kudos, especially amongst the Bemba-speaking people of our country. Rupiah has been prepared to pervert the course of justice thinking that he would reap political benefit. Rupiah learnt a bitter lesson in Kasama where his friend Chiluba could not even manage to campaign because wherever he went, he was being booed and reminded that he is a lazo (thief).

It seems Rupiah has started to understand that Chiluba is a political liability and is at pains to justify something that cannot be justified. This is why he is resorting to insulting innocent prosecutors. Rupiah is looking for something to help him convince our people that his acquittal of Chiluba was done in their interest. Literally what he is saying is that Levy Mwanawasa and his Attorney General George Kunda, and indeed their Director of Public Prosecutions, were wrong in allowing Chiluba to be prosecuted.

It seems the problem that their acquittal of Chiluba has caused them is following them into the election campaigns wherever they go. They are actually not sleeping over their criminal act. It’s hounding them wherever they go. They are always made to feel they have to justify the acquittal of their friend. This is a difficult way to live. But this is how liars live. This is the pain and anguish dishonest people cause onto themselves.

We don’t know when Rupiah will learn if ever that lying is not a sustainable way to run anything, is not a recipe for governing well. If Rupiah could learn to be honest and truthful, he would soon find out that it is possible to govern and be successful without resorting to shameful acrobatics. Rupiah would be able to take responsibility for his mistakes and credit for his successes. But lying deprives him of such comforts.

But all that this is pointing to is Rupiah’s complicity in the acquittal of Chiluba. It requires little intelligence – if a little is all one has to realise that what Rupiah is saying is simply that he stopped the conviction of Chiluba and any attempts to appeal against that. This is a fact that is even recognised by the state-owned and government controlled Zambia Daily Mail.

Reporting on this same issue in their edition of yesterday, the Daily Mail’s lead story read in part: “President Banda has revealed that he refused to appeal against the acquittal of former president Frederick Chiluba because the lawyers who were prosecuting the matter were merely doing it for business.”


And added: “Mr Banda said it was illogical for him to appeal Dr Chiluba’s case and look for another US $13 million to give a small group of people…” This is what the Daily Mail understood as having been said by Rupiah.

What does it amount to? Who actually made the decision not to appeal? Who was going to defy the President and appeal? This probably explains the gymnastics that Chalwe Mchenga engaged in as Director of Public Prosecutions in withdrawing the appeal. This also clearly explains why Maxwell Nkole was fired by Rupiah for attempting to appeal against the boss’ wish.

It seems logic is not one of the strongest points of Rupiah and his minions. Anyway, we can excuse them because it is very difficult to maintain any form of logic when one has to tell a new lie every day. These people never get tired of lying. It seems they can’t live without lies, deceit, manipulation and calumny.

To justify his acquittal of Chiluba, Rupiah has continued to accuse even The Post for the problems arising from this bad decision and action of his. Even in blaming The Post, lies are not very far. In Solwezi on Friday, Rupiah was telling our people that they should ignore what we are saying when we criticise him because we also criticised Levy when he was alive and only praised him when he died. This is not true.

We say this because there are editions of The Post carrying praise of some deeds of Levy when he was alive. Yes, we criticised Levy when criticism was valid and praised him when we thought he deserved praise. Levy was a far much better human being than this Rupiah we have for our president today. Levy was superior to Rupiah in many ways – intellectually, sense of humanity, honesty and integrity.

This is why Levy took a different approach to our criticism and recognised our good intentions despite all the criticism. Levy assigned to us the responsibility of writing his biography simply because he found us trustworthy and capable of objectivity. We enjoyed friendship with not only Levy but his wife also, children and assistants. But this did not bar us from being critical when there was need to be so, from calling a spade a spade.

Levy for his part did not hesitate to criticise us also when he felt we were unfair to him. But he respected our right to express our opinion – right or wrong, palatable or unpalatable – just like we respected his. The same applies to our relationship with comrade Kenneth Kaunda. It’s true we were critical of KK and his government in the three months that we operated when he was president.

We have discussed all these issues with KK and he understands why we took the positions we took. And today, comrade KK is not only a comrade of ours, he is also our friend – a personal friend. And we very much value this relationship although we don’t philosophise about it or exhibit it.

However, the same cannot be said about Chiluba because it’s not possible for us to be friends with an unrepentant thief, a lazo.

A person like Chiluba can only be a friend of Rupiah who thinks that notwithstanding his many thefts and abuses of public resources, he was a damn good president. We are probably not the only ones who look at Chiluba in this way.

Even Levy who Chiluba helped to become president looked at him in more or less the same way and found it impossible to ignore Chiluba’s thefts. We don’t think comrade KK looks at Chiluba the way Rupiah does, as a damn good president. So, what is Rupiah talking about? Utter nonsense!

What Rupiah wants is all of us to be his minions and praise singers. This will never happen.

Labels: CHILUBA, MIKE MULONGOTI, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 9:58 AM