THE PUNCH PERSPECTIVE; OUR WEEKLY OPINION – WHY ARE PF LEADERS BEING INSULTED AND BEATEN BY THEIR OWN PEOPLE
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WE have noted an increase in the numbers of people that are being arrested by the police for allegedly insulting or defaming the President as the charge would go. Other PF party leaders and government Ministers have not been spared. The insults and abusive language have not spared the man in charge of security – Stephen Kampyongo!
But why is it that PF is recording a high number of insults on the leadership even when they have a record of being the biggest relative spender of national resources on arming the police? Those that insult the President are arrested quite often but there seems to be no reduction.
This must send a strong signal to PF and more so to the man in charge of security, Kampyongo. By our recollection, about three well connected PF cadres have gone hard and lethal on him. Kampyongo is one minister who rarely ends his remarks without a threat, but as Bembas say, ‘umulembwe wacipuba upwila muli tumfwe’.
We agree with President Edgar Lungu when he directs police to arrest the PF cadres that attacked PF Bahati MP Charles Chalwe, we totally agree. However we want to remind Lungu that the attack on Chalwe was child’s play compared to the attack on UPND Chilanga aspirant Charmaine Musonda, a defenceless woman who PF thugs followed and beat at her own home. ‘I called the police and feared that these people would kill me,” said Musonda but Lungu and Kampyongo appear not to have been concerned.
If favouritism is the standard of PF, Charmaine Musonda is somehow connected to them – she is a close friend to one of their close friends, the jailed lawyer and former Chilanga MP and PF ally Keith Mukata. The cadres that area now insulting Kampyongo and beating other MPs are woven from the same cloth as those that attacked Musonda, the same cadres that killed Glazier Mutapa and many other who have lost lives under PF regime of Edgar Lungu.
Instead of practising political masturbation, Kampyongo as minister in charge of homeland security and Lungu as commander in chief must act decisively. They must not bring UPND President Hakainde Hichilema or indeed any other person into the equation to condemn violence. Violence, like any other crime has to be met with full force of the law but sadly if it’s a PF thug, he will be arrested and jailed but be out at the nearest Presidential pardon. Lungu must step his foot on the right pedal or else one day it is him who will be beaten.
So bwana Lungu, bwana Kampyongo, please deal with violence before it escalates to uncontrollable levels.
We find it strange when the PF administration keeps asking ‘others’ to denounce violence. Violence is violence and a criminal undertaking which requires an equally lethal reaction!