WHAT WAS THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF THE DEFAMATION OF THE PRESIDENT ALL ABOUT?
By Kellys Kaunda
The arguments made by most of you on my post entitled, “DECRIMINALIZE MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION” appeared as though I was suggesting something new.
You accused me of promoting a culture of insults and lawlessness.
But guess what? All those remarks you made against me, you also made against President Hichilema!
You are no different from King David who condemned a rich ruler who had taken the only animal belonging to a poor man and slaughtered it for his guests leaving behind his countless flock.
Unknown to him, the prophet had given David a story so he could pass judgment on himself!
While you thought you were condemning me because you thought the arguments I was making were mine, you were condemning yourselves and the man you were defending.
The rationale President Hichilema used for the decriminalization of the defamation of the President is the same one I used in my call for the decriminalization of misinformation and disinformation.
I wholeheartedly subscribe to his arguments. So, if you thought I had invented new arguments, guess what? You were wrong.
The only difference between you and Hichilema is that he knew exactly what he was doing while most of you, apparently, didn’t know – he was purposely dribbling not only Zambians, but the whole world.
He knew that to truly achieve the benefits of the decriminalization of the President, he needed to address laws on hate speech and sedition.
But he purposely left these intact because he knew that the same offenses under the criminal defamation of the President existed under hate speech and sedition.
While he did not dribble me because I knew, he dribbled most of you who criticized my call for the decriminalization of misinformation and disinformation.
My call was for a holistic approach to legal reforms if we are genuine about advancing the cause of democracy.
But, most of you, like President Hichilema, are not truly committed to democratic reforms.
You are interested in cherry-picking and window-dressing.
Most of you, as usual, when Hichilema is the subject of debate, resort to the deflection strategy – why didn’t you call for similar reforms in the government you served?
This is like Donald Trump blaming Obama or Bidden or all the democrats for anything that goes wrong under his watch!
What this line of debate simply confirms is this: a decision has already been made by the UPND government that no qualitative political reforms must be expected.
PF and its surrogates will and must pay for what they did to Hichilema and the party while in the opposition.
Every opportunity and every excuse is to be exploited until they are effectively tamed, forced into exile or sent to jail.