DON’T PRE-OCCUPY YOURSELF WITH FIXING OPPONENTS, HH TOLD
GOVERNANCE activist Reuben Lifuka says President Hakainde Hichilema-Elect should not make fixing political opponents suspected of looting public coffers, his sole pre-occupation.
And Lifuka who is also former Transparency International Zambia Chapter president, said UPND would not reverse the ills of the PF administration by doing things that were outside the law.
Speaking when he featured on Diamond’s COSTA programme on Sunday evening Lifuka said the President Hichilema should leave the role of prosecution of suspected corruption cases that
happened in the PF regime to law enforcers.
“The UPND cannot reverse the ills of the PF by doing things outside the law. Everything has to be done by the rule book as it were. One way of ensuring that whatever is done is done above board, is to allow the law enforcement agencies to do their job. Provide sufficient support, technical financial and let them do their job,” said Lifuka.
He said going the root of vindictiveness would not help the UPND manage the issue of corruption, stressing that the law enforcers were best placed to handle the issues of corruption without any undue influence.
“It will not help us to go the vindictive, political witch-hunt way. This should not be the president’s sole pre-occupation on day one that we need to fix whoever was involved. The law enforcement agencies are more than capable of doing their work but it is also a demonstration, when you see DEC waking up and doing this… It is a demonstration of the problems we had in the past,” he said.
“The DEC have not just found the freedom like everyone else, the DEC and whoever else was investigating these cases could probably not touch them because they had political protection and that in itself is a problem. When you start to give explicitly political protection to wrong doers their day in court will come because a day will come when law enforcement agencies, will they have got sufficient latitude to their work.”
And Lifuka said justice could never be substituted by forgiveness.
“The unfortunate bit is that people are saying ‘yes we should forgive’ but forgiveness is not a substitute to justice. We cannot just say forgive and forget about justice what about the victims of corruption,” he said.
“I hope the incoming administration will realise that one of the things that led to the PF to losing power was numerous complaints and allegations of corruption and abuse of power.”
