COUNCIL of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) general secretary Fr Emmanuel Chikoya has expressed concern over the selective application of the law in the country.
Fr Chikoya has noted that the sooner the country begins to apply the law fairly and without discrimination, the better for everyone.
In July, last year, suspended Eastern Province PF youth chairperson Emmanuel Jay Jay Banda and some other PF cadres stormed Lusaka Central Police and assaulted some unsuspecting officers on duty.
They also got away with undisclosed amounts of money belonging to one of the officers.
In November, last year, a few months after the incident, Lusaka High Court Judge Wilfred Muma fined Banda and three others K150 each for disorderly conduct in a police station after they pleaded guilty, while their co-accused Maxwell Pito was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for assaulting a police officer.
On Wednesday this week, the Chinsali Magistrates’ Court convicted Sesheke UPND member of parliament Romeo Kang’ombe on a charge of assault and two counts of abduction of police officers.
The court however, acquitted him on one count of assault.
He is yet to be sentenced in the three charges.
But in an interview, Fr Chikoya called for sanity in the country, saying the two cases showed that other people were more Zambian than others.
“It must remain a concern. It shows that they are others who are more Zambian than others, and that the Zambian law has got eyes. It selects who to see and who not to see. The two cases actually, you are talking of the Central Police, the mother of all the police stations in Zambia, being stormed by well known political party cadres from the Patriotic Front. They went on the run and then appeared, then the case suddenly faltered. Which kind of law are we applying? These are the very concrete examples of how unprofessional our police are,” he said.
“There must be zero tolerance for that behavior. Just yesterday (Wednesday), when there was this filing in of nominations, I was driving and next to me was a police landcruiser. There was a group of these buses with PF cadres on rooftops shouting and telling everyone to move out of the road. The police never moved an inch, they were on the road and these guys were causing mayhem on the road. The police were not doing anything. That is the problem and the buck falls on the President, we need to have sanity in this country.”
Fr Chikoya noted that the sooner the country begins to apply the law fairly and without discrimination, the better for everyone.
“You cannot have laws where others have committed the same offence, others go to prison and others are filing adoptions to stand as MPs. When a political party allows a person like that to even file nominations and to even do campaigns, they are telling you that violence is part of their DNA. There is nothing else you can say, because there is no way a well known violent person that has attacked including the highest strategic police station in Zambia, they are walking scout free, campaigning and challenging even a sitting Minister. That tells you that something is not okay somewhere. So, it is a serious source of concern and these are things that are a danger to national peace. The sooner we begin to apply the law fairly and without discrimination the better for this country,” said Fr Chikoya.
