By Mwenya Mofya,
FORMER works and supply minister Sylvia Chalikosa says the PF may get sympathy votes in any of the upcoming elections owing to the continued persecution of senior party members.
In an interview, Chalikosa wondered why some atrocities perpetrated by the UPND in the past were not being followed up by law enforcement agencies.
“I would probably say that it is also selective persecution. We are aware that going back into time, there were some atrocities that were performed by members of the UPND. For instance the killing of Chanda in Southern Province, he was brutally killed and I think the perpetrators of that murder have not been taken to task.
Unless they are already in jail, I do not know. That is something that is not being talked about. There are other atrocities that have happened in the past that were performed by members of the UPND but we are not seeing that brought to the fore,” she said.
“This brings to mind that, is it just the prosecution of selective justice? Even if you are going to hunt for senior members of PF and trying to obliterate PF, [it] will not work. PF is a large opposition party now and its members are too many for you to go at each and every one of them.
Even if you touch a few big fishes here and there, the onus is on you to prove their wrongdoing. In an event that you fail to prove wrongdoings, then UPND stands to lose faith.”
And when asked whether the alleged persecution of PF members would affect the UPND’s performance in any upcoming election, Chalikosa said the PF could even get sympathy votes.
“It is possible because when people start forming an opinion about your organisation, they either support or not support you. So depending on how you are taking it, they may support or not. You know, we may even get a sympathy vote because we are being persecuted. But then again, we are not looking for sympathy but we are just saying the Zambian President must do the right thing,” she said.
“Justice must be justice and not vengeance. Even these nullifications of the PF seats, why is it only in PF? What is the status of the other cases that PF is following up? What has happened with that? Have there been any rulings on the cases that PF has appealed on? Nothing, we have not heard anything.”
Chalikosa said the UPND government wanted PF members to be bankrupt through the continued payment of legal fees.
“So if they will keep on with these arrests, five years will be up and before they know it, time would have run out. The idea being that they want PF to be bankrupt with law fees. You know, every time going to court and paying lawyers because of this and that.
So my thinking is that they want to bankrupt our members who could be constantly paying legal fees. However, we may come into an arrangement where we have lawyers who are doing work for us pro bono. So what would have the UPND achieved at the end of the day?” asked Chalikosa.
“I think the best thing that can happen here is for them to concentrate on what they can deliver to the people of Zambia rather than being sensational about saying ‘in 2015 or 2014 this happened’, really? Are we going to live our lives in the past? I think it is a waste of time.
These fights of corruption that are perceived to have been done in the past usually yield very little results. When you are outside you imagine that all sorts of things happened, when in truth those things were not even happening.”