Just explain your wealth,
don’t cry wolf so early!
Edgar Lungu, the former president, says he is not hiding behind his immunity and that he is ready to face whatever charges.
“You don’t have to be very intelligent to know that after her [his wife Esther], it is me. This is a sequence. You are peeling an onion. So, I am ready. All I can say is I am ready. If there is talk about immunity, yes, they can take it away, the immunity, to answer to whatever charges. Even if they say I want to hide behind immunity, I am not hiding anything.
Even now, they are at liberty to question me. I can answer,” said Lungu after a journalist asked how he was relating to the fact that his son, daughter and now his wife were being investigated. “So don’t worry, I know what is going on. The strategy is to make sure they kill PF. They kill my political life. I am still politically active though not in leadership but I can still give an opinion. I can still influence things. I have said I am no longer there but I am a living being.
In short, you can consult me. I am also a player in that sense. So, they want me out of it completely but you can kill a body, you can’t kill a soul and you can’t kill ideas. There are people who believe in what we believed in PF and what we still believe in and that is what is going to rein supreme. We now stand head and shoulder above them because people have been able to compare oranges with oranges and they can tell which ones are wholesome and which ones are rotten. I said it, lying, lying…ubufi, bubele, buhata, boza.”
It’s very difficult to understand why Edgar has decided to come out in a combative manner following investigations by the Drug Enforcement Commission on properties involving his wife, daughter Tasila and son Dalitso. It is said that self-confidence is very important. But without compassion and humility, it’s just arrogance.
Here is the man who used to rubbish the Financial Intelligence Centre reports as mfwiti, mfwiti, mfwiti. What is wrong with one furnishing details to law enforcement agencies as and when required to do so? Edgar and his PF regime closed media organisations even against court orders. They gave the victims no chance! Edgar boasted of carrying a big stick and he used to threaten his perceived enemies that he would fall on them like a tonne of bricks. Why is he feeling threatened all of a sudden? What wrong, crime, did he commit for him to now table, offer to forgo, his immunity and declare his readiness to answer to whatever charges can be preferred on him?
And they should cry wolf today, that they’re being persecuted! No ways! Does Edgar remember how many families and individuals his agents humiliated through arbitrary arrests and invasion of their home? Why is he complaining even when he is being treated with respect? Does questioning a corruption suspect become persecution? Certainly not. We urge Edgar’s family to take it low and clear their names without fanfare. We all know where they came from, how long they stayed in power and how much they were earning while in office. Crying wolf will not take them anywhere; not even the number of scriptures they quote will help them. The only noble thing to do is to face the law enforcement agencies and explain their wealth, that’s all. It’s as simple as that and then you walk head high – in freedom.
Thomas Merton advises that, “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”
The Bible too in Proverbs 16:18 says, “pride goes before the fall.”
While Charles Caleb Colton said, “The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.”
So, Edgar and Esther should not waste our time seeking unmerited sympathy. Let them just explain their wealth and justify it. Spewing hot air won’t help much.