Chishala Kateka Flashes Red-card to New Dawn Government and the Police
She wrote….
The New Heritage Party wishes to express its disappointment and concern on the following matters pertaining to the disrupted peaceful protest March against the 25 years concession on the Lusaka – Ndola Dual Carriageway Concession.
We want to put it on record that in disrupting the peaceful protest in the manner in which it was done by the police and other agents, the highest law of the land was broken.
Zambia is a constitutional republic which means that any law or action by any entity, state or otherwise that is not in keeping with the constitution is not only unlawful but is null and void in the face of the law, as stated in article 1 of the constitution which states that “An act or omission that contravenes the Constitution is illegal”
Our protest was made in keeping with the constitutional provisions and also in line with the requirements of the Public Order Act, as was ruled upon by the Honorable Supreme Court in the case of Mulundika and Seven others, where it was ruled “that subsection 4 of section 5 of the Public Order Act, CAP 104, contravenes Articles 20 and 21 of the constitution and is null and void, and therefore invalid for unconstitutionality. It follows also that the invalidity and the constitutional guarantee of the rights of assembly and expression preclude the prosecution of persons and the criminalisation of gatherings in contravention of the subsection pronounced against.
Accordingly, a prosecution based on paragraph (a) of section 7 which depends on subsection 4 of section 5 would itself be inconsistent with the constitutional guarantees and equally invalid.”
The police are there to protect these rights of lawful or law abiding citizens, which we were, and the police was there to protect the lives of lawful citizens which we were, they are there to keep the peace which is their mandate, but in this case the police chose to go against the constitutional provisions and proceeded to break the law by preventing us from presenting the petition to the correct office and in so doing denied the Zambian people the opportunity to be heard on a matter of National importance.
Further they proceeded to arrest and detain innocent and law abiding citizens without just cause, which was again, a violation of the law.
We want to sound a friendly caution to the police command through the inspector general of police and the police that the days of impunity and abuse of the law in the manner that they conducted themselves in the past are over and we will not take this aggravation lightly on ourselves or any other Zambian, we know that there are a lot of innocent Zambians languishing in police cells, remand facilities and prisons through out the country because of their low status in society, their ignorance of their rights and vulnerability.
We are here to show a Red Card to the police and to the UPND administration that there is no more room for continued abuse of our rights because this country is a democratic multiparty state.
Earlier this year we warned about Zambia sleep walking into a dictatorship and what transpired is one of the signs that we are talking about of the creation of a police state – but we refuse to be cowed.
We would like to advise the UPND government not to use the police for purposes of suppressing the citizens and narrowing the space for their political opponents simply because of their waning political fortunes brought about by their own political incapabilities and incompetences – especially for having failed to fulfill their campaign promises.
#ZambiaOurHeritage
CHISHALA KATEKA
President-New Heritage Party.