By Staff Reporter
Economic Front (EF) leader Wynter Kabimba says not every opposition leader being arrested is being persecuted by those in government.
“I take a different view myself from that general view. I personally think that every citizen of this country, including political party leaders, including opposition political party members must abide by the law in whatever they say, do or act,” Kabimba said to Daily Revelation media, saying the country has had cases of opposition party leaders claiming that they were being persecuted because the President wished so yet they get acquitted. “So if it is the President who is directing that, how come you have been acquitted? You have been acquitted because you didn’t commit an offence. I am eccentric myself and if there is anything that God didn’t give me, he didn’t give me too much of emotions. And also I don’t think from the crowd. So I don’t get easily excitable that when the whole country is excited about something, I should also get excited.”
Kabimba said it doesn not mean that “because we are all in the opposition and therefore we think the same.”
“Who says that an opposition political leader cannot committ an offence? Who says that Wynter Kabimba as an opposition leader can’t commit a traffic offence? Who says I can’t commit any other offence under the provisions of the criminal code and if I am arrested that can only be political?” Kabimba asked. “Who says as a matter of principle that if I’m an opposition political leader therefore any offence that I commit must be politically inclined? There is no principle like that. As an opposition political leader I am a citizen of this country and I am therefore amenable to the laws of this country. So if I beat up my wife I have committed an offence … If I criminally defame somebody, I have committed an offence. Just as somebody in the ruling party may commit the same or similar offences. So the principle that when I am arrested as a political leader it means that it’s political persecution or it’s political injustice, that’s the principle that I don’t agree with.”
He said he also did not agree that everybody in the country, especially among the opposition should comment whenever an opposition leader was arrested.
But asked what his response would be to those who will get the impression that he has made this statement only because the latest opposition leader to be arrested is Socialist Party (SP) leader Dr Fred M’membe, someone he is said to be not in good books with, Kabimba said Chishimba Kambwili has been arrested many times and he never said anything about those arrests, and that he has just come back from Mansa where he is representing Nixon Chilangwa, yet he has not made any statement that the Kawambwa member of parliament is being persecuted.
He said he represented the late Dean Mung’omba in 1997 but he never made a statement that Dean was being persecuted, only now that he has decided to write that the man was framed.
Kabimba said even when Hakainde Hichilema was arrested as an opposition leader for treason, he did not say that he was being persecuted as the only statement he made then was that the offence he had committee was not tantamount to treason.
“That is my position. So you will not find me in the crowd of people. I think alone and I take a position,” said Kabimba.
He said he has not looked at the penal code to see and relate what Dr M’membe said and what the sections in the code say.
2 Comments