By Walusungu Lundu
PEOPLE have debated about this particular issue as to what another five years of PF would have meant for this country, it’s a very scary preposition, says constitutional lawyer John Sangwa.
State Counsel Sangwa said, when he featured on Muvi TV’s Assignment on Sunday, that the Constitution under the PF completely collapsed.
He charged that the executive got involved in extreme acts of lawlessness.
Sangwa stressed the need for the Constitution to be sorted out and called on politicians to put aside own interests and do what is in the best interest of the country.
“The people have to demand for this. Let’s talk in the context of what we have gone through. I don’t think as a country we have sat down to interrogate the implication of the 2021 elections. I think this is what somebody would describe as a country that dodged the bullet. Because I don’t know, people have debated about this particular issue as to what another five years of PF would have meant for this country. It’s a very scary preposition. But we succeeded in averting that. But the question is when we look at the situation that emerged, we had a complete failure, collapse of the Constitution,” he said. “So the Constitution failed really. Because all the institutions of government collapsed. The Executive failed to perform….it got involved in extreme acts of lawlessness and you had a situation where in a period of 10 years a government takes a country literally debt free and in 10 years later you’re sitting on a debt of $14 billion. This is eternal debt. You also go further accrue another in excess of $6-8 billion of internal debt. That is complete chaos that is killing your country. But the fundamental point is this, where was the National Assembly? Where was the Judiciary, in terms of their ability to control the Executive?”
Sangwa said if the essence of the Constitution is basically to prevent such kind of situations, people expect the other branches of government to come in and contain one branches of government.
He said the Constitution under the PF administration just ended up being a useless piece of document which was not even worth the paper it was written on because it failed.
“The Executive became uncontrollable, the Judiciary failed, the National Assembly failed…And the Constitution itself failed to control the situation. So what we should be asking ourselves which unfortunately is a conversation we are not having as a country is how did we find ourselves in this situation? And how do we make sure that this situation doesn’t happen again? The only way we had to save this situation is that people have to come out en masse to register and also to vote. It was the voters, not the institutions of government that saved the day,” he said. “These are scary developments which unfortunately we are not discussing as a country. The Constitution just ended up being a useless piece of document which was not even worth the paper it was written on because it failed.”
Meanwhile, Sangwa said unlike the new aawn administration which says its priority is revamping the country’s economy, sorting out the Constitution should have been the first thing to do.
He explained that historically, every country that has tried to come out of a mess sorts out the Constitution first.
“The current government says their priority is economy. Well, the economy does not exist in a vacuum. It needs a foundation and the Constitution is that foundation. Historically, every country that has tried to come out of a mess the first thing they do is to sort out the constitution. If you’re to choose between the economy and the constitution, I would say give priority to the constitution,” Sangwa said. “These are the kind of issues we should be discussing as a country as opposed to the nonsense that we read on social media and so forth. When all this nonsense was going to do with fake contracts…literally entering into contracts that are designed to siphon money out of government coffers…what happened to those laws? Where did we go wrong?”
He also said he was yet to see how safe the country is under the UPND administration.
Sangwa said he would rather put his trust in the law than trusting the words of politicians.
He urged Zambians to get involved in constitutional activities.
Sangwa noted that people became too relaxed after voting but he warned them that politicians do “crazy” things when people don’t keep a close eye on them.
He said people should not forget that every government, including the PF promised the rule of law and the fight against corruption, hence the need to ensure the new government doesn’t repeat the wrongs PF did.
“We need as a country to have a conversation and say how did the PF as a government manage to do so much damage to this country? There were laws quite okay, but how did they manage to do that? Then you have to ask how do we prevent the current government from doing the same nonsense that we have gone through? I mean these are critical issues that we need to discuss,” Sangwa said. “Don’t forget that PF was also promising rule of law and promised to fight corruption. Every government does that. After voting we have gone to sleep, it’s like we have solved the problem. We need to be able to be vigilant to ensure that what happened under PF shouldn’t happen. When people are not involved politicians will do crazy things. People voted for a radical change and not continuity of what was happening under the PF.”
And Sangwa argued that there are no lacunas in the Constitution.
He explained that saying there are lacunas in the constitution is same as saying there are gaps, of which don’t exist.
“There is no such a thing as lacuna in a constitution because that basically means gap. But there is no thing as lacuna in the constitution. The Constitution is consistent. What people are referring to as a lacuna is what they think should be there but is there. Those are preferences that is not a lacuna,” Sangwa said.
He stressed the need for the Constitution to be respected the way it is.
Sangwa said the moment people start insinuating how the Constitution should be then they are perpetrating lawlessness.