By Staff Reporter
There is no way Edgar Lungu and his cohorts can claim to be clean, former commerce minister Bob Sichinga has charged.
But Sichinga said he does not trust the institutions doing the investigations, as he feels they are incapable of matching up to the accountability demands shown by President Hakainde Hichilema.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Sichinga said it must not be lost on Zambians that former president Lungu ran an extremely corrupt government, and that the evidence was there in the purchase of the fire tenders, inflated costs on government procurements such as drugs, roads, ambulances and motor vehicles.
“I am still concerned there has been no accountability on the former president himself on how he acquired so much wealth within a short time,” Sichinga said, adding that he participated in the elections and saw how shamelessly extravagant the former ruling party were during the campaigns. “It is very clear there is no way Lungu and his cohorts can claim to be clean.”
Sichinga said he was only concerned with the current institutions handling these investigations, and that the viral video making the rounds about the former Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) director general justified his claims.
He said he did not see those who served in the Lungu government coming out with a clean slate, but was worried that the outcome would not serve as a deterrent against future perpetrators of crime.
Sichinga said President Hichilema recently mentioned that he would soon announce the assets recovered from the corrupt, saying he was persuaded but would only be convinced once the announcement was made.
“The longer it takes the more loss of confidence the public will have in the results. I am not privy to what the government or President’s strategy is in terms of how they want to handle this corruption thing, whether he wants to leave it in the institutions which I think are inadequate,” Sichinga said. “ACC frankly, in my opinion is totally useless. And the National Prosecutions Authority, I have no confidence in them in terms of what they can do to help the prosecutions.”
Sichinga said even the courts themselves were a problem, singling out the Constitutional Court, including the police and the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), saying if it were left to him he would have gotten independent institutions from outside the country to help recover what is said to have been stolen.
