President Edgar Lungu has constituted a death squad police command trio consisting of Inspector General Kakoma Kanganja, and his deputies for operations and administration Charity Katanga and Richard Mweene respectively, says Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) president Never Mumba.

And Mumba says Kanganja cannot re-organise the police service to inspire confidence from members of the public because under his watch, more innocent Zambians have been killed.

In a video shared on his Facebook page, Saturday, Mumba said the Kanganja and his new deputies were not a good combination going into the August 12 elections.

“First of all, we do not seek to defend them, but we think from a professional point of view, these are two people that tried to stand for what was right. The last words that the Deputy IG [Bonny] Kapeso said concerning the PF cadres whom we challenged to the face, if you want my job, come and get it, since you want to control us, you want to tell us what to do, come and get our job. And I can go back home and work from there. That was the last sentence and there is an assumption that that could have costed him his job. And we would like to say that the replacement of the two deputy IGs, constitute what we could call a death squad moving towards the elections this year,” Mumba said.

“Madam Katanga is a well-known officer who has made it extremely complicated for the opposition to carry activities on the Copperbelt. That’s a well-known fact. I cannot speak for the other man but I know that we are creating a squad that will make it extremely complicated for the election to be free and fair. And we would like the President to look into it. We think that he has the right to appoint whoever he wills, but we also have a right to mention that he has now just managed to constitute a death squad, we are not safe under the three that have been assembled. And we ask the President to re-think concerning the new team that he has put in place to lead us towards the elections.”

And Mumba said Kanganja could not inspire confidence because many had died under his watch.

“The blood of Mr Nsama the late and Mr Kaunda the late must not be wasted. We stand of course in mourning with the families that have lost the beloved ones. But we want to make comments on the changes that the President has made in the police service. First of all, we commend him for acknowledging the fact that we do have crisis in our police service, if we didn’t have a crisis, the President would have not made changes at all. So, that very act of trying to re-organise the police service is an admittance that there is a problem at the police headquarters. But we also want to be quick to mention that while we have no power on the choices that the President makes, because he has the constitutional authority to appoint anyone that he feels will play that role, the Movement for Multi-party Democracy wishes to put its position on the record that we want to make it extremely clear that in our view from the history we have about the two majors that have been reshuffled, the deputy IGs and the six months extension that has been given to IG and the two commissioners that have been brought to become deputy IGs, this is our position. The whole idea of making changes at the police headquarters was to remove this shedding of blood of innocent people. It is true that under the current IG Mr Kanganja, we have seen more political bloodshed under his watch than any other IG in history,” he said.

“Therefore, we have a question as to how he is expected to raise the confidence of the police service when on his hands, he has more blood of innocent Zambians than any other IG. It beats our thinking and we think that this decision to keep him there until the election undermines any possibility of an election that could be free and fair and without interference from the police. We disagree with the fact that he has been looked at as a person who can construct the confidence of the police.”