ABOUT PUNISHMENT WITHOUT TRIAL: A CASE OF FIGHTING CORRUPTION WITH CRIMINALITY
By Sean E. Tembo – PeP President
1. For a society to thrive and prosper, it’s laws and enforcement thereof must be fair and equitable. However, oftentimes we never pay attention or care about unfairness until we are victims ourselves personally. Then we look for the tallest mountain to climb on, and shout on top of our voices complaining about the unfairness and injustice that we are being subjected to, oblivious to the fact that moments ago, others were standing on the same mountain complaining about unfairness and injustice but we did not pay attention or care, and yet we now want others to pay attention and care about our own plight.
2. Time and again, l have reiterated that l support President Hakainde Hichilema’s fight against corruption provided it is done in a fair, equitable and just manner. The natural course of justice is that you take a suspect to court and if they are convicted, you punish them. Any punishment exerted on a suspect before a conviction is extra-judicial and a violation of that person’s constitutional rights. However, President Hakainde Hichilema’s fight against corruption is structured in such a way that it begins with punishment even before a person is arrested or charged or prosecuted or convicted. That is not enforcing the law. That is abusing the law.
3. Various individuals might have been involved in corrupt activities under the previous PF administration, but the mere fact that they are suspected of committing offences does not entitle the State to impose extra-judicial punishment on them by forfeiting their property in the absence of an arrest, prosecution and conviction. The case of former Mines Minister and Chililabombwe MP, Richard Musukwa is one of several cases where the State has seized property and forfeited it to itself in the absence of any conviction. The other day, the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) was boasting that they have, in the past 20 months or so, forfeited money and property worth more than K2 billion.
4. What DEC omitted to disclose in that press briefing is that none of these forfeitures were as a result of a conviction in a court of law. All of these forfeitures were arbitrary. Property taken away from the Zambian people without any due process of the law as enshrined in the Constitution. It is also worth mentioning at this point that in the majority of these forfeitures, the victims were never arrested, charged or prosecuted. As soon as DEC forfeited the properties and monies, they closed the cases. They didn’t want to arrest and charge these individuals and risk an acquittal in court. Maybe these individuals are guilty, maybe they are not, but the bottom line is that for as long as they are not subjected to a trial in a court of law, we shall never know.
5. Maybe President Hakainde Hichilema has good intentions to fight corruption and give back to the Zambian people what was stolen from them, but the bottom line is that the way he is going about his fight against corruption makes his Government look like a mafia criminal gang, with ZP, ACC, OP and DEC as his criminal muscle with the objective of financially crippling the opposition so that come 2026 general elections, the opposition will have no financial muscle to wage a decent political fight. In other words, l am beginning to think that President Hakainde Hichilema’s fight against corruption is not really a fight against corruption but a fight against democracy and a ploy to create a de-facto one party state.
6. If President Hakainde Hichilema’s corruption fight was genuine, he would have waged it within the confines of the law by respecting the constitutional rights of citizens. No matter how guilty a person might appear on the surface, the law requires that such a person must be subjected to a trial where evidence against them is adduced and they are given an opportunity to defend themselves. Only after a conviction should a person be punished, and never before. Evidently, President Hakainde Hichilema sees the law as an inconvenience in his “fight” against corruption. He has therefore decided to create a personal gang of ZP, ACC, OP and DEC officers under the auspices of the so-called Joint Investigations Team (JIT) to circumvent the law and disposes certain people of their property with neither an arrest, charge, prosecution nor conviction. Indeed, some people might have stolen under the PF regime, but under the current circumstances, President Hakainde Hichilema himself is the criminal together with his band of thugs from ZP, ACC, OP and DEC.
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SET 31.05.2023