Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba has commended President Hakainde Hichilema for removing the defamation of the President law from Zambia’s statutes, describing the law as having been abused by successive presidents to ruin people’s careers.
“I totally commend the President for that repeal in the Penal Code. This defamation of the President law was being used to intimidate leaders of opposition political parties who were using social media to criticise the President and ended up in prison. It was even used to ruin careers of certain individuals. I remember one doctor in Mongu was sent to prison and had his career ruined,” Sinkamba said. “The President is elected into public office by the people. He actually enjoys tax payers’ money for his stay in office. Therefore the people that gave him the mandate to govern should be at liberty to criticise him when they see that he is doing things wrongly. This is a great milestone and will allow citizens to wholeheartedly pour their discontent and criticise the Head of State so that he can equally sieve through what is being said about him.”
But Sinkamba has said that the abolishment of the death penalty by President Hichilema is cosmetic because it has not been addressed through the Republican Constitution.
“The death penalty is a Constitutional issue. Legally speaking the abolishment of the death penalty by removing it from the Penal Code without attending to the Constitution provision is cosmetic. Any President that would come can change the Penal Code and restore the death penalty because all fundamental issues in the Constitution have remained the same. In other words, the President has just scratched on top and this will have no effect on the actual enforcement of the law,” Sinkamba said. “In the last 24 years there no one has been executed because all successive Presidents did not sign any execution orders. In as much as there have been these court orders no President signed them so that they can be enforced. So what the President has done is no better than what has been happening for the past 24 years.”
He said that the abolishment of the death penalty can only be effected by addressing Constitutional provisions through a referendum.
“Like I said, the death penalty is a Constitutional issue and removing it from the Penal Code will not have any effect on its enforcement because the Penal Code is a subsidiary law. It can only be changed by the citizens through a referendum,” Sinkamba said.
