UPND believe anyone who challenges them they will simply arrest – Sean Tembo

UPND believe anyone who challenges them they will simply arrest – Tembo

By Kholiwe Miti

ANY Zambian who believes that there is fair application of law their sanity should be questioned because the writing is on the wall, says Sean Tembo.

The Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP) president said there is no fair application of the law in the UPND government.

During the Hot Seat programme on Hot FM on Thursday, Tembo said the UPND government is using the police as a tool to settle their disputes.

“Any Zambian who believes that there is a fair application of the law their sanity should be questioned because the writing is on the wall. If you read or view that video by Fr [Chewe] Mukosa where he was talking about the issue of load shedding, did he insult anybody in there? Did you find any insults? Of course, you didn’t. Did he disparage anybody? Of course he didn’t. So on what basis did the Zambia Police Service decide that they needed to summon Fr Mukosa for the offence of hate speech? Hate speech towards who, Zesco or government? That is ridiculous,” he said. “But anyone who has been following the actions of the Zambian police and the UPND government will realise that the UPND are using the Zambia Police as their number one tool. They believe that anyone who wants to challenge them they will simply arrest them on vigorous charges and are channelled to magistrates who get their instructions from State House. Magistrates who are going to give a conviction even when there is no evidence. That is their game plan. That is what they have been doing.”

Tembo said the Zambian judicial system has lost its credibility.

“We have a situation whereby the judiciary has lost all credibility. I will give you a small example, a few months ago we went to file a complaint at the magistrates court against the UPND secretary general Batuke Imenda. A criminal complaint for hate speech where he referred to the Archbishop of Lusaka Dr Alick Banda as a lucifer of Zambia. That is clear hate speech. Tou are saying someone is Satan and this is a head of a church, and we wrote to DPP Gilbert Phiri and we said give us consent to privately prosecute this matter. First of all he said you haven’t given evidence. So we sent him the evidence. We gave him the video where Imenda was saying those words. A clear video, that is evidence, and we also told him we have four witnesses who are willing to testify. Then he dilly-dallied for a good two months. Then the next one the matter came up for mention. We were informed, we were given a ruling that the DPP had declined the consent and despite the evidence he had declined the consent. So we decide we were going to pursue this matter because this is unfair application of the law,” he said. “We have individuals who are being given two years for hate speech. We have Chishimba Kambwili who was given five months for hate speech and the DPP is even appealing that sentence. That is double standards and we said we are going to take this case to the High Court for judicial review. And we proceeded to magistrate court to get a record of the letter that Gilbert Phiri wrote to the court where he declined to give consent because we need that if we are going to file for judicial review. We also wanted the court to render a ruling where he dismissed that and on file there is nothing. The letter from Gilbert Phiri is not on file. The ruling is not on file. And so you have a situation whereby the judiciary is being treated as a kantemba of the UPND. They can render any judgment or ruling they want and without any evidence, without any documents. How is it that the matter was dismissed if DPP never wrote a letter to deny consent? It speaks volumes of the underhand methods of UPND administration. Their use of the police, their use of the judiciary to undermine the democracy of this country.”

Tembo also said the reason why UPND does not care about its people is because it plans to rig the 2026 elections.

“When we politicians are speaking to the public like this they think we are joking. But my appeal is that if the people of Zambia are happy with the way the UPND is mismanaging the affairs of the nation, the way they are pocketing money – public money – into their pockets through consent judgments of their cadres; the way they are selling mines to themselves through proxies like IRH; the way they are mismanaging the economy, if they are happy then well and good. But if they are not happy and want a more sober government in 2026, it will not be enough for the people just to vote. What is needed in 2026 is for the people to actively participate in protecting the votes,” said Tembo. “Because I have no doubt in my mind that the reason the UPND are so arrogant, the reason the UPND do not care about public sentiments, they do not care about their political suicide is because they have got plans to rig the elections in 2026. And it is up to us the people, it is up to the people out there, to protect the vote. If people just vote and they go home and they expect the results to reflect their will they are dreaming. They need to be active at the polling stations monitoring the votes and ensuring that any UPND member who comes to ty and rig the elections the people effect a citizen’s arrest. That is the only way that the will of the people will be reflected in the results of the ballot.”