Maravi

Bite the bullet over Mufumbwe boob, Syakalima tells Kabonde

Bite the bullet over Mufumbwe boob, Syakalima tells Kabonde
By Chibaula Silwamba
Tue 01 June 2010, 04:10 CAT

FRANCIS Kabonde must just bite the bullet over the Mufumbwe boob, Siavonga UPND member of parliament Douglas Syakalima said yesterday.

And Syakalima said it was good that commanding officers and other senior police officers were now questioning inspector general Kabonde over his trip to Mufumbwe during the by-elections.

Commenting on revelations that Kabonde told senior police officers during a meeting that President Rupiah Banda sent him to Mufumbwe ahead of the April 29 parliamentary by-elections, Syakalima said Kabonde’s behaviour in Mufumbwe was unprofessional.

“Even his argument that we should blame provincial commanding officer Fabian Katiba but immediately he went there Katiba was nobody, he was a nothing. That is how security works. There is no way now that Kabonde can now start blaming Katiba. That day when Kabonde was there, I called Katiba, said, ‘Katiba look at the way we worked in Solwezi’.

When Katiba would not do anything, I would phone Kabonde in Lusaka, then he would direct the command but now we had no recourse anymore,” Syakalima said.

“I had called Katiba myself and asked, ‘what is happening there’ but there was nothing that Katiba could have done because the Inspector General was there and he Katiba answered me rightly that, ‘the inspector general is here sir’.

Let him leave Katiba alone. Katiba behaved himself in Solwezi by-elections in 2009. Whenever he couldn’t do anything, you can ask Kabonde, I used to call him to say, ‘see what your officers are doing’. So it was not Katiba’s fault. Immediately he Katiba told me, ‘the IG is here’, I knew what he was talking about. So what Kabonde did in Mufumbwe was very unprofessional.”

He said the fact that Kabonde was in Mufumbwe meant that all the queries from the opposition political parties had to be channelled through him and not Katiba.

“Kabonde took over the command. There is no way that they can blame Katiba now; he must just bite the bullet and if indeed his commanders are questioning him, they are right because that is how professionals work and I am glad that his commanders are blaming him. That is how professionally he should behave,” he said.

“You look at the footage we saw on Muvi TV where himself was ducking from stones from MMD cadres who were stoning. He has squared the blame on himself, he cannot tell us that it’s the President who told him to go there.

Yes, we know he is the commander in chief of the armed forces but he should have explained to him that it is not normal for himself, the entire police command to go in a small area, meaning that all he was saying was that the country was under siege. That is what he was portraying.”

He wondered why Kabonde did not properly advise President Banda.

“He must tell us the truth as to who exactly told him to go there. Is it President Banda or it was Mangani? If it was President Banda, then Banda himself was risking the country. Since now he has now realised that it was a lapse, professionally he couldn’t have done that, if he starts now saying he was told to go there against his professional etiquette then he must resign. The only thing he can do is to tender his resignation because we have no confidence in him anymore,” Syakalima said.

“Internal security is very important because you don’t know the enemy within and if himself can behave like that then the whole country is shaky and the whole country must start questioning whether we are safe. His behaviour was a danger to national security. He should not have gone to Mufumbwe.

Just when he went there, violence increased. So what does that entail for the country if people were doing extreme violence under the nose of the inspector general of police? So who is safe?”

He said in a normal country, Kabonde could have resigned a long time ago.
Syakalima said police officers must be non-partisan.

Last week, sources revealed to The Post that police provincial commanding officers, some deputy commissioners and senior assistant commissioners on Thursday grilled Kabonde over the Mufumbwe violence and demanded a post-mortem to avoid the repeat of the bloody fracas.

The sources said Kabonde told the police commanders that President Banda had ordered him to travel to Mufumbwe Constituency during the by-elections in April.

The sources also said Kabonde had directed police provincial commanding officers to assign intelligence officers to sniff around and find out who the presidential candidate for the PF-UPND Pact and other opposition parties would be in the 2011 elections.

The sources also revealed that home affairs minister Mkhondo Lungu has queried Kabonde why he did not appropriately advise President Banda about the implications of his going to police Mufumbwe by-elections.

But police deputy spokesperson Ndandula Siamana said while it was true that the meeting took place on Thursday last week and at the reported time, the meeting generally looked at the operations combat unit.

Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, DOUGLAS SYAKALIMA, FRANCIS KABONDE

posted by MrK @ 12:37 AM