They besieged my home, Given Lubinda
Good evening my dear friends! The story being circulated on social media originated by the Zambian Bulletin Online Media, cannot go without comment.
First and foremost, there were no thugs at my residence last night and there has never been any on any day.
Secondly it is true that my residence was besieged by hundreds of heavily armed police officers from midnight until 07:00hours. They were driving numerous police Landcruisers and mounting anti-riot tanks. They totally sealed the road leading to our residence. It was like a war zone!
One of the videos attached to the article, in which a voice of a known cadre from a known political party is interviewing one of the so-called thugs was taken at our construction site close to our residence. We were totally unaware of any people being there in the night except for security officers who man the place.
If indeed there were thugs at either our residence or at our construction site, would the police not have arrested them during the night? Would the police have waited for 06:00 hours as purported by the author of the Zambian Bulletin article?
For any reasonable person, it must be shocking to read that the police refused to arrest thugs who were to be dispatched to various polling stations where they were expected to cause confusion and, in the process, help the Patriotic Front (PF) to sneak in ballot papers on the basis that they would do so at 06:00 hours after getting a search warrant.
In one of the circulated videos, you can hear voices castigating police for not having taken action and thereby allowing the so-called thugs to jump over the fence. There was no reason for anyone to jump any fence because the site is not surrounded by a fence but there is a long stretch without a fence. In addition, some of the alleged thugs as seen in the second video that is attached to the article, are a number of youths some running and others walking. Clearly the video was taken after dawn.
One would ask why the police could not arrest the so-called thugs. My only conclusion is that the police did not have anyone to arrest and did not have any reason to arrest them.
The only truth is that we were besieged.