Opposition leaders arrests!

By Daily Revelation Editor

The Immigration Department two days ago slapped new charges on PF central committee member Chishimba Kambwili for failing to present himself before the department when he left the country for Zimbabwe.

Last year, Kambwili was forced back into the country from Zimbabwe after he said that his efforts to be granted authority to travel out of the country for medical treatment were frustrated.

However, the coincidence in the latest charge by the Department on the PF member has raised more questions actually in that the same seemed to have been timed to coincide with his release from prison, where he was serving a 5-month jail term in another matter.

Some have argued that the charges were slapped on Kambwili just a day before be was due for release from prison to use the same as a warning shot to ‘behave’ during his time out of the prison cells, while others argued that the aim is to keep him perpetually entangled with court cases in order to make him ineffective as a politician. 

Still others have argued that regardless the arguments, he was supposed to be made answerable for the crimes he’s alleged to have committed in the past. 

Nevertheless, whatever Kambwili is alleged to have committed, and he should be prosecuted if he committed any crime, however, it just smarks of heartlessness on the part of the Immigration to have slapped someone with more criminal charges just when he was due for release from prison on other charges. The move by the Immigration Department actually renders credence to the argument that the state institution was being used to join the political fray of ‘persecuting’ the opponents of the powers that be. It seems they were waiting for the perfect opportunity to sour Kambwili’s release from jail, and that the motivation was not to necessarily prosecute the alleged crime that is alleged to have been committed, but to punish one of the political opponents of the President and those in power.

It is beyond argument that it has become fashionable in this country for those in power to punish their opponents with criminal charges and jail terms in order to make them ineffective and reduce effective completion against the President.

Why it is that in this country the only ones who are serving jail terms and facing serious offences before the courts are mainly from the opposition? Some, like late opposition FDD leader Edith Nawakwi, died with criminal cases hanging over her head, to the point where her scheduled treatment over her illness in India was destabilised on account of an arrest she was facing here in Zambia. Why are those from the ruling party, like Education minister Douglas Syakalima not being arraigned before the courts, when what they said could have qualified as serious criminal offences if the same were uttered by an oppostion leader? Syakalima famously said that the people of Luapula suffered from the poverty of mind? Why has the sugilite case involving ruling party members been kept off the public space for instance?

Why are some of the senior government officials still serving in office when they are under investigations by the investigative wings, while the very few who have been fired for corruption are not appearing before the courts of law?

Zambians did not anticipate a continuation of the things they are seeing happening under this administration when they were voting for change in 2021. And one would even wonder why there was even a change of government when the same injustices people denounced under the previous administrations have continued under the present government.