PF Deputy Parliamentary chief whip Tutwa Ngulube says UPND president Hakainde Hichilema should not compare the Malawian Constitutional Court to the Zambian ConCourt because the two are not the same in terms of hierarchy.

In an interview, Ngulube argued that the Malawian ConCourt was not a court of final jurisdiction and comparing it to Zambia, therefore, was like comparing a cow with a lion.

“First of all, no one can trust the UPND; no one can trust Hichilema himself! If you look at the Constitutional Court of Malawi, the Constitutional Court of Malawi is below the Supreme Court. Here in Zambia, the Constitutional Court is at the same level as the Supreme Court. So Hichilema must understand, he must not make statements before doing his research; he must employ people to be researching for him so that they can be guiding him and advising him on political lines,” Ngulube said.

“The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Zambia are at the same power and they are at the same level. In Malawi, the Constitutional Court is at the level of High Court. So the decision of the Constitutional Court of Malawi is appealable to the Supreme Court in Malawi. Here on Zambia, all decisions of the Constitutional Court are final. It is like comparing a cow to a lion; you should tell a lion that you should emulate a cow the two are not the same; both in the powers and in their structures. In the Constitutional Court of Zambia, their powers are final no one can question their judgement, in Malawi their decisions can be questioned.”

And Ngulube urged Hichilema to support Constitution Amendment Bill number 10 if he wanted justice in the administration of election petitions.

“Please, Mr Hichilema, can you ignore what happened in Malawi because you don’t understand how their courts are operating. Concentrate on Bill number 10 in Zambia and see how it can help your situation because come 2021 next year, he will lose; he will still run to court because the Constitution has not yet been clarified; even the number of days for calling witnesses has not been increased; he will still trap himself and again they will tell him ‘sir we cannot continue hearing your matter because the time is up’,” he said.

Ngulube also argued that unlike Hichilema, the opposition in Malawi had enough evidence.

“And If you want to go the Constitutional Court [when] you don’t have evidence; you go to the Constitutional Court, you don’t present any witness, you don’t have any document that shows that elections were stolen; you want the court to nullify an election; in Malawi their colleagues spent almost eight months in court trying to prove this. Every document was uttered and the courts nullified the election based on what they found. If here in Zambia the opposition do not want to produce any evidence, all they want to say is that our election was marred, Hichilema should be the last person to complain about losing an election because he has lost to how many Presidents? And how many elections has he lost? So if he was a popular person, he could have been President by now,” said Ngulube.