THERE ARE NO COMPELLING REASONS TO REMOVE LUNGU’S IMMUNITY – AMOS CHANDA
Former State House press aide Amos Chanda says there is no compelling reason to remove the immunity of former Republican President Edgar Lungu to pave way for prosecution.
Featuring on Prime Television’s Oxygen for Democracy program, Chanda said the removal of immunity for former presidents had not drawn any success.
Chanda said second Republican President Frederick Chiluba was dragged to court on allegations of plunder of astronomical amounts of money but only USD42 million was recovered through a civil suit despite matters levelled against him by his predecessor Levy Mwanawasa touted as criminal transgressions.
“President Chiluba was dragged to court for something in excess of USD500 million a lot of time was spent on that, at the end of it USD42 million was the charge. It was not even a criminal settlement in the final analysis and a civil case settled for that. The acquittal came and the rest is history,” he said.
“President Banda came in, massive amounts came in, he was charged for a donation of fuel from Nigeria, an acquittal came, the restoration of immunity took place and that ignited the amendment to the law and strange provisions now exist to allow the lifting of the immunity of the president.”
Chanda said under the current set up, the immunity of the President can only be removed under clearly defined circumstances.
“There should be clearly defined charges labelled against the president and parliament must sit as a court in the US style where the President’s lawyers come there, and they present their case. So, there are two things, there has to be a vote, there has to be a trial and there has to be this lifting of that immunity. In the five-year political season, you can take away three years before that process succeeds.” he said.
“Another thing is you need 116 members of parliament. The tension that President Lungu spoke about at the funeral of Kungo (Jackson) to say that he was not petitioning because even the background of the tension he went through in 2016 when President Hakainde petitioned, he was letting it go. But he would allow MPs to petition.”
He said that removal of immunity should be on well founded grounds.
“I think that the removal of the immunity of the President has to be well founded. If a case exists for such a fundamental decision to be made, that is why we have that provision to remove. By my gut feeling says, unless the charges have been laid out, I have not seen anything, on what grounds has it been done?” Chanda said.
“The prosecution for himself (Edgar Lungu) or people around, of course himself you cannot do it with that immunity. Do circumstances warrant such a decision? My take now is that there is nothing that exists that I know of that warrants such a decision at the expense of national unity. if there is something so overwhelming, so compelling that investigative agencies have and they have given the President, wow that is why we lost that bill, but even what I know and what I have seen there is nothing compelling to warrant such a decision.”