PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu must be impeached immediately for abrogating the law, demands Enock Tonga.
Tonga, president of the opposition 3RD Liberation Movement (3RD-LM), said President Lungu acted negligently when he asked ministers to stay in office illegally.
In 2016 after the dissolution of parliament, President Lungu asked his ministers to remain in office and earned monies.
“Having seriously interrogated the law and in the interest of governance to continue, I will run government with my Cabinet! Lawyers that want can go to court but I am ready to debate with them over the issue because I am also a lawyer,” Edgar bragged as several ministers who attended the May 14, 2016 press conference cheered in support. “Shame to those people who don’t read. I beg you people to read…people are debating things they don’t know…On the issue of violence on ministers, the law will take its course. I talk slowly but I carry a big stick. Let them dare harass ministers and permanent secretaries, they will see. They should just obey the law because they are still ministers; they should know that I carry a big stick but I rarely use it; I can get at wrongdoers and law breakers bakashala muli mwamoneni [they will have themselves to blame] because there is no room for violence in Zambia.”
But the Law Association of Zambia and opposition UPND sued the government in the Constitutional Court.
On Monday, the Constitutional Court issued an ultimatum to 63 former Patriotic Front cabinet ministers and their deputies to pay back money they illicitly acquired for illegally staying in office prior to the 2016 general elections.
The court ordered that the K4,266,664.10 Ngosa Simbyakula and 62 others are required to pay back to the Treasury for the period May to July 2016 should be repaid by January 5, 2021.
Commenting on the order, Tonga said the ruling should be used as a reference for constitutional abrogations and warrants an impeachment.
“President Edgar Chagwa Lungu must be impeached for misleading the 64 ministers whom he illegally kept in office to his own advantage when he clearly knew the implications for doing that as a lawyer. If he is not impeached now over this matter, we shall have him arrested at an opportune time as we form government,” he said.
“The ministers whilst working together with their boss, in this case Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu, before he became a doctor (hopefully he does become a general) committed a crime and finally have been found wanting by the law through the Constitutional Court.”
He said any persons who commit heinous crimes should be called criminals.
“Hence all those ministers as they follow suit the impeachment of their boss who manipulated them deserve nothing less than 27 years jail sentence and have them banned for life from public service,” Tonga said. “To ask the said 64 ministers to pay these tuma (small) change money (what is 61,000, 55,000 in the hands of ministers of President Edgar Chagwa Lungu whom together with his ministers are a bunch of failures when it comes to the real fight against corruption?). Now since 2016 and to make the situation even worse, the kwacha is in ICU – kwacha has depreciated, lost its value – K21 to a dollar, is total insult right in the face of the owners of those monies – who are the people of Zambia.”
Tonga added that the ministers should have been ordered to pay back immediately because the act was an illegality.
“Sadly, we have a sleeping opposition in parliament. In view of the above, we don’t buy into the Constitutional Court ruling, it’s so-called justice system within the same house whose mother and father are one. If it was a common man to have stolen a cob of maize to put in his empty stomach, the results could have been totally different,” he said. “Finally, the said ministers should have paid those tuma little change long ago. Now that they didn’t, 48 hours to settle the small-change money should have been more appropriate. Failure to which [we should] have them all behind bars.”
Tonga said the Constitutional Court ruling stands as basis upon which “Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu must be impeached”.
He insisted that beneficiaries of the illegal salaries ought to be jailed.
“All those 64 ministers must be sent to jail for not less than 27 years. Those ndalama – monies they illegally received could have been used to buy medicines in hospitals, but ended up in the deep pockets of these fat-bellied ministers,” said Tonga. “We have lost beloved ones as a nation because of no medicine in hospitals. Why? Because money was illegally pocketed by Jean Kapata, Harry Kalaba, Given Lubinda and many others. No, all those 64 ministers deserve nothing less than 27-year jail sentence while their boss, one Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu [should be] impeached now. Criminals deserve hard punch.”