RAINBOW Party general secretary Wynter Kabimba says the manner in which Faith Musonda’s case was concluded served as a message from the Anti-Corruption Commission to thieves that “take a chance, if we catch you too bad, but we can trade off”.

And Kabimba says the UPND government might only rule for a term due to the “lies” they told during campaigns.

Meanwhile, Kabimba says it’s unfortunate that government is suggesting a fuel price increment when they promised the opposite during campaigns.

Speaking when he featured on Millennium Radio, Wednesday, Kabimba said the ACC’s decision to take possession of Musonda’s money in exchange for her freedom was not good for the corruption fight.

“Well, it is normal in a criminal justice system all over the world to trade off. If you said to the suspect ‘tell us how you put up a $10 million house when your income cannot afford this house’, and if you don’t, the presumption according to the law is that this house, you must have acquired the value of the house $10 million as proceeds of crime. Then the fellow says ‘I don’t have an explanation’, ‘then you have to forfeit the house’, then he says ‘take it’. But there is another argument to that, if everybody is going to do that, then why should you worry about ACC, I will trade off. If they catch me, I will trade off, if they don’t catch me, good for me. That is what ACC is telling us, ‘take a chance, if we catch you too bad, but we can trade off’. Is that how you want to fight corruption? The answer is no!” Kabimba said.

Kabimba also said the manner in which the ACC treated former special assistant to the president for press and public relations Amos Chanda during investigations lacked decency.

“ACC and all the investigation wings have to realise that they are accountable to the people, they have to realise that they are dealing with families of human beings. We have no problem with ACC executing its duties under the law. But what we are beginning to see is worrying. There is a difference between holding me to account and traumatizing me and my family and humiliating me and my family. I am saying this, not because I know the people who are involved, I will pick on Amos Chanda, I am not saying he is innocent, I am not saying he is guilty, why do you have to go to a poor guy’s house at midnight with officers wielding guns? Waking up the children and you start ransacking the place, yet the principle of law under which we operate is that the man is innocent until he is proven guilty. How do you compensate for that trauma to his family if the man is innocent? I don’t think this is right by ACC, there is a better way of treating Zambians that you suspect have committed an offence. It is this lack of decency that makes people perceive these institutions as being under instructions from the Executive,” he said.

And Kabimba said it was unfortunate that UPND was suggesting a fuel price increment when they had promised to lower the price of the commodity.

“In fact I was surprised, I was actually staggered to hear the Minister say that. This is a group and [by] group I mean UPND, this was a group that was telling us during the campaign that the pump price we were paying was too high. That was their explanation, the reason why the pump price is too high is because it has too many middlemen. What will the UPND do in government ‘we will cut off these middlemen and make sure that the pump price of fuel is affordable by every Zambian’,” Kabimba said.

“Today they have forgotten what they have said because they know that Zambians have short memories, they have come back now and say ‘prepare for increased prices or you are doomed’. They were telling us that the Zesco tariffs were very high under the PF government, and today they are saying that ‘Zesco needs to charge economic and competitive (tariffs)’. So, it means If our problems are at 10 percent today, they will double to 20 percent because everything then will be the production cost will have to be increased. The mealie meal price will have to go up because the production of 25 KG bag will go up. The cost of transport will go up. Why? Because energy has a direct effect on the production cost.”

Meanwhile, Kabimba said UPND was heading in the same direction as political parties which had ruled for only one term.

“So these are guys that came to win an election riding on lies, on populism. Now let me tell you what populism does, we saw this under MMD, that MMD came as a populist government ‘we shall make sure that what Kaunda has done, will never be done again and you will have a good life’, and MMD won. If Chiluba had not banned Kaunda from standing in 1996, Kaunda would have won that election. People had seen through the lies of the MMD. In Poland, there was a trade unionist called Lech Walesa, he won an election in Poland against the communist government because of the wind of change. Walesa stayed in office for five years, they voted him out and voted back the communist party. I can see UPND taking the same route because we are governed by the same laws of nature and political dynamics. These lies that they rolled on, they will soon come to rout and the Zambians will say ‘all my God, we have a wrong team in place’,” said Kabimba.