HICHILEMA USING THE PUBLIC ORDER ACT TO OPPRESS AND SUPPRESS THE OPPOSITION IN ZAMBIA, SAYS HARRY KALABA
By New Dawn Reporter
THE Public Order Act is the law that has been used to oppress and suppress those in the opposition, Harry Kalaba, the Citizens First president Harry Kalaba has charged.
Kalaba has reminded President Hichilema about how bad the Public Order Act (POA) is as it infringes on the rights of the people.
He says President Hichilema should have been the best student to have graduated from the law which was used against him several times and Zambians spoke against the abuse of the law, which he is now taking advantage of and abusing it.
“What is the public order act, that is why today nobody has been convicted on that law, I stand to be corrected. It is the law that has been used to suppress and oppress us in the opposition. It is a bad law and President Hakainde himself had condemned it extensively and he promised Zambians many lies like before he become President, he promised Zambians that he will do away with the Public Order Act when he becomes President. He promised Zambians that the first thing he was going to do is to do away with the Public Order Act. Because he said we were independent people so why should we have the Public Order Act?
There he goes, he has continued to use the Public Order Act to suppress his political opponents. They used it on me, remember in Kalulushi. In Kalulushi I was detained for going for lunch at a senior member’s residence and the police came and threatened us with teargas. I had to go to the police and I was detained.
Tomorrow Hope I will come to visit you at your home and they will say that you invited Kalaba and you have broken the law and you are going to be in trouble. Is that the way we are going to live in our country? And I want to invite the international community to reflect on how we are suffering in our country, the international community need to know that Mr. Hakainde Hichilema our President with due respect is not what he says he is,” he said.
Kalaba said Zambians are now disappointed that the person they thought would respect the rule of law is now enjoying abusing the very law he condemned when he was in the opposition.
He said President Hichilema should remember how he cried to the international community whenever the former regime applied the Public Order Act in the manner that seemed to work for them then.
“The public order act is an oppressive law, meant to deter people from expressing their democratic right and sadly the person we thought he would fight for us, the person we thought he was going to stand for us is now the person who has gone perpetrating injustices like that. President Hichilema promised to do away with the Public Order Act, but now what is he waiting for? It is important for the people out there to know that this man is meant, he is out there to intimidate and oppress his colleagues in the opposition.
We have been saying this, we have been appealing to the international community because that is where Mr. Hakainde Hichilema kept crying to every time, they scratched him. We are saying, look at this, the President has continued to perpetrate things he was complaining about oppression of the opposition political parties. If is even difficult to obtain a permit to even meet as opposition political parties, we had applied in a place like Kalulushi but we were denied last week.
In Mwansabombwe it was the same when we wanted to mobilize our party structures, even when we wanted to have meetings in Mandevu and Munali, these things have continued. But when you listen to speeches from our colleagues, I head from one of the diplomatic corps in this country praising that things have changed … is this what we should be talking about instead of talking about the high cost of mealie meal, instead of talking about high levels of unemployment, the President should concern himself with casketing down on his fruitless and worthless foreign trips he is making as opposed to doing what he is doing,” he said.
Kalaba said even the changes they want to make now were just cosmetic, as the only change they have made was the change of the name.
He said all what the people want was the complete removal of the public order act from the statutes.