THE Law Association of Zambia LAZ has written to Patriotic Front Secretary General Davies Mwila, asking the ruling party to exculpate itself from allegations that the party was involved in the disruption of the legal body’s public discussion last month.

In an interview LAZ president Eddie Mwitwa said LAZ had decided to write to Mwila because the party had not refuted media reports that PF was behind the disruption.

“We have written to the IG, we are waiting for response but we have gone further we have also written to the Patriotic Front Secretary General to just bring to their attention that there were news reports that indicated that that mob that had attacked our discussion was sponsored by some PF members. We have written to Secretary General of the PF and we have said to them that we haven’t seen any denial in the press to whether it is true that Patriotic Front had anything to do with that mob. So we are also waiting for a response on that,” Mwitwa said.

“What we expect that the party will take those allegations seriously and investigate the matter and give us a position; because we as the leadership of LAZ have a duty to report to our members as to what really transpired because that particular incident, has sent a very chilling message to our members some of them are fearing of attending similar discussions in future. So we need to get to the bottom of it and find ways of ensuring that it doesn’t happen again in future.”

He said if the PF decided not to respond to the claim, it would confirm that the party was involved.

“For us then it will be confirmation that those news reports about the mob having been sponsored by somebody within the party will be confirmed. We are hoping that they will say it is not true because your paper was one of those that carried on the front page article where pictures of two PF youth leaders had said to have been the ones to bust the mob in the hotel and we thought that anybody from the party, seeing that especially form the top leadership, particularly the Secretary General, would come out and deny those allegations. I don’t know if it is just me but I haven’t seen anything from the party. They say silence is equivalent to consent so we hope that this is not the case with them and they will come out and tell us that they had nothing to do with it,” Mwitwa said.

Mwitwa said the association was still waiting for the police to update them on any progress made in investigating the same case.

“But beyond that, we have formally lodged a complaint with the police. Our secretariat did tender a complaint at Long Acres Police post and again we are waiting for the police to update us on the progress of the investigations. So we are not sleeping. We are definitely doing something about it because that incident is something that we do not want to see it repeated,” said Mwitwa.

“I mean if you look at last Friday’s News Diggers’s discussion which featured Mr John Sangwa, Mr Patrick Nshindano and Father Chikoya; it was very very sad to see that it was behind closed doors! That is just confirmation that there is apprehension regarding the state of law and order in the country and that our democracy is under threat. So we need to put an end to things such as what happened at the Law Association of Zambia public discussion. We are just waiting for a response from the PF and the IG as well because with the IG, we requested that he should assure us that the matter will be investigated professionally and objectively and that he personally will take a keen interest in the matter.”