Sun, 26 Mar 2017 09:36:40 +0000
By Bennie Mundando
THE proposed establishments of other law societies have nothing to do with the predicament in which the current Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) administration has found itself in, says PF Kasama Central MP Kelvin Sampa.
Mr Sampa said Zambia had multiple law associations before it became a one party state to which lawyers belonged.
Last week, Mr. Sampa drafted a Bill to facilitate the establishment of other law societies apart from the LAZ.
The bill provides legal practitioners a choice to belong to any association of their choice as long as they were ordinarily resident in Zambia and had been admitted as advocates and their names were entered into the roll of practitioners kept under section 5 of the Legal Practitioners Act.
According to the bill, notwithstanding subsection (1), no person in Zambia or anywhere else, who had been suspended from practice or whose name had been struck off a roll of practitioners shall be qualified to become a member unless the period of his suspension had expired or his name had been restored to such a roll.
Mr. Sampa said it was unfortunate that some people within LAZ had taken his drafted proposal as a political move aimed at suffocating its embattled leadership.
He said it was sad that there were people who never took time to read the history of Zambia and only jumped to misguided conclusions out of ignorance.
He said Zambia had many associations before it became a one party State and wondered why his proposal was taken as something alien to the country.
“You see, there is nothing new about my proposal and people should not align it to political interference because of what the current leadership at LAZ is going through,” he said.
