Rainbow Party General Secretary Wynter Kabimba says the only way to stop President Edgar Lungu from holding office for a third successive time is by voting against him in the 2021 general election.
And Kabimba says PF policy inconsistencies are making stakeholders lose confidence in the regime.
In an interview, Kabimba said the only way for Zambians to oppose the Constitutional Court’s judgement that President Lungu is eligible to contest elections in 2021 is by voting against him in the August, 2021 polls.
“The Constitution says the decision of the Constitutional Court is final. So, the only institution in this country, by the Constitution, which is mandated with the interpretation of the law, is the Judiciary. That is important to understand. But that is different from saying that you do not agree with the judgement. Unfortunately, even if you don’t agree with the judgement, which opinion as a citizen you have a right to express; I do not agree with the judgement by the ConCourt myself, but it doesn’t change the judgement because I am not the one that by law is vested with powers to interpret the law, that power is vested in the ConCourt. So, the only way President Lungu can be stopped is at the ballot. If Zambians feel strongly that he didn’t deserve the third term or another term; or if they want to disagree with the judgement of the ConCourt, they may go and vote against the man,” Kabimba advised.
“Then they would be telling the ConCourt that ‘we did not agree with your decision, so we shall use the court of public opinion to pass our own judgement!’ But to continue the debate that the country is polarised because there are those that do not support and those that support, it’s academic. The decision that has to be made is political because the political power is not vested in the ConCourt. The political power of this country is vested in the people. So, the people can make a judgement at the ballot, which does not agree with the ConCourt.”
And Kabimba said there was no seriousness on the part of government to bring to fruition the proposed constitutional amendments to the 2016 amended Constitution owing to endless contradictory pronouncements.
“The President and some Ministers have been saying that amendment to the Public Order Act and the Constitution will wait for the long-awaited national dialogue to take place and other political stakeholders can then raise those issues and together with government, we can get a comment to commit itself to the amendment that are going to take place. But I have also read a statement from the Minister of Justice (Given Lubinda) that amendments to the Public Order Act will be going to the next session of Parliament from his earlier statement that those amendments will have to await the Public Order Act,” said Kabimba.
“So, it is these contradictions in pronouncements by government that do not give confidence to those outside government that the government is serious about the issues that have been raised by stakeholders in terms of the weaknesses in the Constitution and the implementation in the enforcement of the Public Order Act. We keep on hearing contradictory statements along the way! So, it is, therefore, very easy for somebody to say that this is not a government that is serious with effecting those amendments. We probably need another government in future that will deal with these issues.”