HH wants his hands in every cookie jar- Makebi

By Fanny Kalonda (The Mast)

IT’S abundantly clear that the only person that is giving President Hakainde Hichilema nightmares is Edgar Lungu, says Lusaka lawyer Makebi Zulu.

Zulu, who served as Eastern Province minister under the Lungu administration, says President Hichilema wants his hands in every cookie jar thereby rendering boards useless.

Featuring on Diamond TV’s COSTA Programme, Zulu charged that the formation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Court in the country is illegal.

“In the first briefing where he said something relating to corruption, he said, ‘now we have our own Chief Justice, we are going to see how we are going to move in this’ so-called fight against corruption. Now the very moment he says ‘now we have our own Chief Justice’, or we now have a chief justice, he is giving the perception that he is in control of the judiciary,” he said. “I am not accusing him, he is interfering, I’m saying it as a matter of fact. He makes a pronouncement and he says we have a chief justice right now, then the next thing you see the Chief Justice create and he says we will introduce the Economic and Financial Crimes Court. [Minister of Justice Mulambo] Haimbe follows and says we are going to create this court. Haimbe says we are going to create this court, and the Chief Justice goes ahead and promulgates a statutory instrument purporting to create a division of the High Court and administratively in the Subordinate Court what he called an Economic and Financial Crimes Court. Now this is coming from a poisoned chalice. A poisoned chalice in the sense that the President should have no say over the administration of the judiciary.”

Zulu accused President Hichilema of interfering with the independence of the judiciary and the investigative wings.

“If an administrative decision is made after a pronouncement, an executive pronouncement on that issue, it brings about a lot of questions; the question as to the independence of the judiciary. If at all the court is going to be created by way of an administrative process, why is it that it is preceeded by a statement by the President? Did the President sit down and have coffee with the Chief justice and decide we are going to create this court? There is nothing legal about that. It’s an illegality. It’s a breach of the Constitution. To say that this institution which the Constitution says to be autonomous, says to be independent, you say it is going to fall under the President’s office that’s an illegality already. It’s a breach of the Constitution,” he said. “The President wants his hands in every cookie jar and because he wants his fingers in every cookie jar, boards are rendered useless. Because they can’t control a person who says they are reporting to their appointing authority as well. It just doesn’t work. So anything that is going to come out of this legal investigative agencies, the law enforcement agencies as it were as well as the judiciary, you will see that there are fingerprints of the President everywhere. It doesn’t give the perception that there will be anything that is going to be called a proper fight against corruption or a genuine fight against corruption. So there is no other way of circumventing the grand norm of the country by way of a gazette or indeed a statutory instrument for purposes of having to comply and calling that a law. If that law is against the Constitution, then the Constitution should supersede that. Gazette is an illegality from the start.”

Zulu alleged that fear has been induced in the judiciary.

“The politics of our country is that once you win you must kill the previous party or the previous person. That’s killing in the political sense not in the literal sense because you do not want them to challenge you in the near future or have influence over you or challenge you in the near future. And that is the witch hunt that has existed from that time onwards. Because of the judgments that have been passed by the court itself, we have seen that the judiciary has become vulnerable. We have seen that fear has been induced in the judiciary. That people now are scared to even make decisions that they ought to make. The right decisions that they ought to make. As a matter of fact, there are certain decisions lately that you look at and say was this really necessary? Did we really have to go, where did we go wrong in the selection of judges? Why would they interpret the Constitution in this manner that defies logic? It defies logic but they have decided and it becomes law, you can’t challenge it beyond that,” Zulu said. “What was the measure of coming up with five months? It’s from that perspective that I did indicate to you that every time a move is made by reason of the President making a statement, as regards how the judiciary must run its affairs, then there is interference. Then the perception of justice being served is downtrodden. The President in my view ought to leave matters to do with the judiciary with the judiciary. Matters to do with investigations he ought to leave it with law enforcement agencies. He has to leave them with that and only concentrate on his role as President of the Republic of Zambia.”

Zulu said there has never been a genuine fight against corruption in the country.

“The moment he sidesteps and thinks he’s in charge of law enforcement, and thinks he’s in charge of the manner in which the judiciary should run, then we will have a problem. We will have a problem because people will no longer have faith in our judicial system. They will think it is what the President says that must go and should go. That should never be the case. That should never be the case especially that the Constitution has told us that in the manner that the judiciary carries out their judicial functions, there should never be any interference from any person or authority in the manner in which they administer their affairs. But the very fact that we are now promulgating laws that are coming up or indeed even the Chief Justice following up on what the President says, it means that there is interference and institutions are succumbing to that process,” said Zulu. “It is very clear, it is abundantly clear, that the only person that is giving President Hakainde Hichilema nightmares is president Edgar Lungu. And it appears he will do everything in his power to as he stated himself to persecute and prosecute president Edgar Chagwa Lungu even via proxies as it may appear to be the case in this particular case. So in that vein it is correct that president Edgar Chagwa Lungu is being persecuted by President Hakainde Hichilema. There has never been a genuine fight against corruption in this country. Instead what we have seen from time immemorial is vindictiveness by regimes that take over from others.”