Maravi

Rupiah, stop abusing the police

By The Post
Wed 26 May 2010, 04:00 CAT

The police is very important in maintaining peace and stability in our country.
But the maintenance of peace and stability in our country does not start and end with the police. It starts and ends with the people.

Law enforcement by the police is only possible when the great majority of the people are willing to cooperate and obey the law. If they decide to disregard the law and law enforcement agencies, there is nothing one can do to stop them. Therefore, the cooperation of citizens in the maintenance of peace and stability is critical. Our police has no capacity to take on the entire population if it decides to rebel.

It is therefore very important that the law and law enforcement agencies do not lose the respect and support of the people.

Peace and stability are threatened when the law and law enforcement agencies like the police are abused by those in power to harass political opponents and other citizens who don’t agree with them. There is a clear abuse of the law and law enforcement agencies by Rupiah Banda and his government. There doesn’t appear to be any right to equality before the law, or equal protection of the law, in this country anymore.

Everything depends on which side of the political divide one stands. It is very difficult for members and supporters of the opposition to get any good or meaningful treatment from the police, the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Drug Enforcement Commission and indeed from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

While members and supporters of the ruling MMD get away with all sorts of clear crimes, members and supporters of the opposition are every day being harassed by the police on non issues, tramped-up charges of this and that. And this discrimination seems to be growing and spreading to all levels of our judicial process.

We are very lucky that in some respects we have a very professional judiciary and some of these wrongs and evils are stopped. But sometimes even the judiciary has failed to escape this problem and has gone with those in power. Examples of this are many, with the classical one being that of Frederick Chiluba’s acquittal and the withdrawal of his appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions in clear complicity with Rupiah. We say this because Rupiah himself publicly stated he stopped the appeal against Chiluba’s acquittal.

There are clear signs that we are headed for a breakdown in the rule of law if things are not quickly corrected. Resentment of what is going on is growing while respect for the law and law enforcement agencies seems to be declining by the day.

There is no way the Zambian people can be expected to continue respecting laws and law enforcement agencies that seriously lack equality, fairness and justice. People can’t be expected to continue seeing Rupiah and his supporters behaving as if they are above the law.

They can assault, harm, defame others with impunity and with the police watching but doing nothing. And when those attacked by Rupiah’s cadres try to defend themselves in the best way they can, they are quickly arrested and charged by the police. Whether cadres of Rupiah or not, all are entitled to equal protection before the law. Where there is no equal protection before the law there is a breakdown of the rule of law because this is fundamental to any just system.

The law and law enforcement agencies should be required to deal evenly and equally with all our people. No one should be placed above the law, which should, after all, be the creation of the people, not something imposed upon them. Citizens submit to the law because they recognise that, however indirectly, they are submitting to themselves as makers of the law. When laws are established by the people who then have to obey them, both law and peace and stability are saved.

The state must have the power to maintain order and punish criminal acts, but this should be done without discrimination on the basis of political affiliation or otherwise, and the rules and procedures by which the state enforces its laws must be public and explicit, not secret, arbitrary or subject to political manipulation by the state.

What is happening in our country is frightening because it may soon lead to a total breakdown of law and order. We saw this in Mufumbwe where MMD cadres were allowed by the police to attack UPND supporters with impunity.

And when UPND supporters tried to defend themselves, they were arrested and accused of violence. And this was happening under the direct supervision and command of the Inspector General of Police. Those who were being attacked, by their logic, were only supposed to turn the other cheek or to run away and give up their campaign so that the MMD has a field day.

What type of lawless law enforcement is this? Probably they wanted a repeat of what happened in Solwezi where opposition cadres were continually on the receiving end of the MMD cadres’ violence without being able to answer violence with violence, fire with fire. But this can never be expected to be a permanent state, a way for the opposition to respond to MMD violence.

It is a well-known fact that violence can only do one thing in the end, and that is to breed counter violence. And there is no law, moral or otherwise, that stops one from using violence only in self-defence. No one has the monopoly of violence.

And this also extends to the violence of words. Rupiah has been calling those he doesn’t like, those he detests, those he hates all sorts of names. He has been insulting and defaming them in all sorts of ways.

And his Vice-President George Kunda has done the same, albeit through innuendoes for fear of being sued because he knows that what he is saying is not right and unlike Rupiah has no immunity. Rupiah has abused Fr Frank Bwalya in so many ways. He has mocked him as being a father without children, he has claimed he is no longer a priest. He has gone much further to refer to Fr Bwalya as an ugly man, kuipa pamanso. He has accused him of being a mad man.

What hasn’t Rupiah said about Fr Bwalya? And when Fr Bwalya tries to respond in the most relatively humble way to Rupiah’s attacks, insults and defamation, he is being summoned to the police and warn and cautioned. What else can Fr Bwalya do to respond or defend himself against the insults, defamation of Rupiah who can’t be sued because the law protects him, it gives him immunity?

Fr Bwalya is every day a victim of so many threats of violence from MMD leaders and cadres. He has reported these threats to the police but nothing has been done. Fr Bwalya threatens no one with violence and he is simply a responsible citizen trying to exercise his constitutional rights to directly participate in the shaping of the destiny of this country.

Rupiah is sowing the seeds of civil disobedience that he will fail to harvest when they mature. Total reliance on the police will not do him any good because their power and capacity is very limited. And any leader who relies on the police is bound to come to grief. The situation can get out of control and the police will not be able to cope and will simply run away or join the people in their disobedience.

This is a multiparty political dispensation; we are not in a one party dictatorship where there is only one authorised voice – that of that one party and its government. Rupiah doesn’t seem to understand the tenets and ethics of multiparty democracy. But there are people in the MMD who should help him to realise that the course he is on is self-destructive both for the MMD and himself.

This increasing obsession to harass Fr Bwalya in all sorts of ways will backfire on Rupiah and his minions. We urge reason to prevail.

Labels: MMD, POLICE CORRUPTION, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 4:05 PM