Maravi

Motorbikes probe amounts to political persecution - Dora

Motorbikes probe amounts to political persecution - Dora
By Chiwoyu Sinyangwe
Thu 24 Nov. 2011, 13:59 CAT

DORA Siliya says the ongoing probe into some motor bicycles she is alleged to have unlawfully acquired amounts to political persecution and harassment. And some of Siliya's sympathisers yesterday complained over the amounts they received from the K4.5 million she had ‘donated' to them after they offered solidarity.

Siliya yesterday appeared before a combined team of officers from the investigations wings where she was interrogated for about 90 minutes.

Siliya who arrived at about 11: 22 a.m was accompanied by former vice-president George Kunda, former mines minister Maxwell Mwale, MMD deputy national chairman Kabinga Pande, and the former ruling party's sole legislator in Luapula province Mwansa Mbulakulima.

She emerged out of the former Task Force on Corruption building at about 12:54.

Siliya who was dressed in a casual black outfit and an MMD head gear, told journalists that Zambia was sliding into a police state under the PF government.

"I consider my visit to the Task Force today a harassment where a genuine organisation ‘My Home Town." No one has ever complained of electric bicycles beings stolen and yet we are being forced to spend time here," Siliya said.

"What we are seeing is political persecution. We are seeing a police state where a former minister can be searched without a search warrant."

[That is the most pathetic defense of corruption ever. Dora Siliya should shut her mouth and take whatever is coming her way. She enjoyed the benefits of corruption while the rest of the country suffered, and now it is time to pay up. - MrK]

She said the government was spending money to "systematically harass" former leaders.

She also claimed that Chongwe's short-lived member of parliament Japhen Mwakalombe was coerced by the ruling PF to give up his legislative position for a diplomatic position.

"The biggest corruption is coercing Mr Mwakalombe in Chongwe to a job in Botswana and Malawi so that someone's ego can be massaged," claimed Siliya.

"They police have instructions from politicians that you must find former leaders wanting but I believe in the judiciary in this country and I know that when politicians misinterpret facts, our comfort is in the judiciary who will make sure they interpret facts. And we will continue to speak, it doesn't matter what media blackout Hon Given Lubinda information minister might want impose."

Siliya's lawyer Sakwiba Sikota said the government needed to apologise to Siliya for harassing her in the ongoing investigations.

"We are asking that the State must apologise. The officers conducting these investigations have admitted that they don't even have a complainant and yet they are harassing our client where there isn't even anybody who has complained," said Sikota. "So, if that isn't harassment, what is?"

And some of Siliya's sympathisers complained that they were being paid about K115, 000, and not the K150, 000 they had initially been promised.

One woman, the paymaster, had painstakingly thrust the money in her armpit as she was meticulously punching the buttons of her scientific calculator as if to get the mathematics correct.

The women who assembled under the huge shed on the fringes of St John's Medical Centre remained waiting to have a bite from the donation long after Siliya and her VIP sympathisers had left.

"Ise simwamene tisebenzela, tizasiya kubwelako we don't operate like this, we will boycott," said an unidentified woman with a baby strapped on her back.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DORA SILIYA, MMD

posted by MrK @ 3:23 PM