Rainbow party general secretary Wynter Kabimba says the ruling Patriotic Front is digging its own grave by allowing party cadres to reign supreme over Cabinet ministers.

And Kabimba says Justice Minister Given Lubinda has no capacity to stop the Executive from interfering with the Judiciary because President Edgar Lungu himself has been in the forefront issuing threatening statements to Constitutional Court judges.

Reacting to Lubinda’s statement last week who said he would not allow any member of the Executive to interfere with operations of the Judiciary, Kabimba told News Diggers! in an interview that PF cadres were more powerful than the Minister of Justice.

He said the Patriotic Front government was digging its own grave by tolerating indiscipline within the party where every member was free to do what they wanted, adding that during his time as chief executive, there was no such thing.

“Well, you have to understand one thing that there is no culture of discipline in the Patriotic Front. There is no body who seems to be in charge of that political party in terms of enforcement of discipline. So everybody is doing there own thing and it is for that reason that the cadres feel they need to take the law into their hands. When I was secretary general of that party, you would not see what’s going on in the PF today because we put in place stringent measures that if you are found doing what you are doing like what they are doing now, you would be expelled from the party and everybody followed that,” Kabimba recalled.

“But now you saw how cadres went and barricaded the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) offices. We condemned that behaviour as Rainbow party because that kind of action is indiscipline and it is outrageous. So we are just getting back to the same issues but the truth of the matter is that there is no discipline in the PF, just like there was no discipline in the MMD. One of the reasons why the Zambian people voted the MMD out of office was lack of discipline within the party, it was harassment of citizens by MMD cadres. So if the PF continue along these lines, surely they are just digging there own political grave because there is no way the Zambian people will forgive them for what they are doing in 2021,” said Kabimba.

And Kabimba observed that PF cadres had become so powerful for Lubinda to control.

“There is no way Lubinda can assure us that he will not allow any member of the Executive to interfere with operations of the Judiciary because we have heard [President] Edgar [Lungu] who is top most of the Executive making statements that are tantamount to interference. The last statement he made was in Solwezi which caused so much public outrage and you heard us as Rainbow party condemning the statement that it was tantamount to intimidation of the Judiciary. So I wouldn’t take the statement from Lubinda seriously, I think he was just playing politics. I wouldn’t take anything that comes from Given seriously myself,” Kabimba said.

Asked if the ministry of justice had been performing to it’s capacity, Kabimba said: “No! The answer is no, that ministry hasn’t been performing according to how we expect it to because cadres are more powerful than the minister of justice. The cadres in PF are more powerful than any other cabinet minster. If the cadres are going go around intimidating citizens or judges at the courts and then the minister of justice is saying nothing about that to condemn the action of cadres, what does that mean? It means that the man is weak, it means that the cadres are reigning high,” Kambimba explained.