IF THE GOVERNMENT IS “ NEW DAWN” LET IT DAWN THROUGH ALL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS – CISCA
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
CIVIL Society Constitution Agenda (CiSCA) has demanded that sections of the Penal Code pertaining to defamation be repealed.
In a statement, CiSCA chairperson Judith Mulenga called for an urgent repeal, particularly sections 191 to 193 and relegating them to civil law.
“The decriminalisation of defamation will not only strengthen the freedoms in our Bill of Rights but will also bring it in line with international human rights principles and standards. The criminal libel provided in the Penal Code is inimical to the enjoyment and exercise of some key fundamental freedoms and have no place in a modern democracy such as ours, and therefore should be expunged from the criminal code,” she said.
“Laws do not confer human rights and some laws are inimical to the protection of human rights and it is the responsibility of every truly democratic government to repeal such laws to bring them in line with the human rights standards and not to let human rights be subjected to such punitive laws.”
Mulenga said deprivation of liberty now seems to be the last resort in progressive democracies.
“Deprivation of liberty is now the last resort in all progressive democracies. Besides, case studies have shown that criminal libel tends to disadvantage the powerless in society. A case in point was the jailing of Chellah Tukuta in his criminal libel case reported by the then minister honourable Dora Siliya. Didn’t our President pardon him and have him released from his two years prison sentence?” Mulenga asked.
“One individual being injured by another person’s utterances should not be a national security issue drawing a huge outlay of security human resources and ruling party cadres at the disposal of such matters. As Zambians we were very clear on such matters on the 21st of August 2021. We were tired of arbitrary arrests of opposition political party leaders, and persons connected or perceived to be connected to opposition political parties and tired of a police service that placed itself at the service of the then ruling party members and those connected to it.
We still have the recording of one former presidential aide urging the then Inspector General of Police not to release one opposition political party leader for a ‘treason case,’ that went nowhere! Why are we still in this roundabout?”
She said it is a fact that if anybody connected to the opposition was reporting defamation to the police, the police would not swing into action.
Mulenga said CiSCA expected serious legal reforms from the current government, going by what they suffered while in opposition.
“The most they would have done is to advise the complainant to sue the other party. Why overhaul the police high command in national interest if the new command is going to ‘serve’ the nation in the same biased manner? The government might as well recall all the national interest retired police officers to serve their remaining terms of employment,” she said. “And that trick of disappearing from the police stations when a legal obligation of signing police bonds is required is so tiresome, unoriginal, and quite frankly boring.
Besides, why do the police insist on only civil servants signing on behalf of suspected persons when there is no legal backing for this practice and when they know that no civil servant would readily sign a police bond on behalf of a politically connected accused person? From the ruling party manifesto and the President’s speeches, we expected a transformative government. Now we are no longer expecting it but demanding it.”
Mulenga urged the government to prove in its conduct that there is indeed a new dawn.
“If the government is ‘new dawn’ let it ‘dawn’ through all governance institutions and structures right down to the lowest grassroot level. We cannot have a dawn in some section of our governance and nocturnal activities in others. As CiSCA we have always suspected that the President’s people have not yet or have refused to buy into his vision,” said Mulenga.
“How else would one explain that at this time when there are pertinent matters that the people are grappling with and which we assume has the President’s total focus such as the delayed agricultural inputs and the rising costs of living, the person who is supposed to help the President explain the challenges to the people is busy distracting the nation with something he can discreetly take care of through a civil procedure?”