UPND Spokesperson Cornelius Mweeta has refuted reports that Minister of Justice Mulambo Haimbe will be fired. This follows attacks on President Hakainde Hichikema’s – HH’s quality legal advisors, who experienced legal minds say should have known better and acted with caution.
There are suggestions and comments making round on Social Media that HH may fire the Justice Minister as he did not advise the President appropriately in relation to the Kwacha Constituency and Kabushi Constituency by-elections. One of Zambia’s leading legal thinkers and constitutional lawyer John Sangwa described the UPNDs legal advisors interpretation of the constitutional court ruling as “juvenile interpretation” of the judgement.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Mweetwa said there is no reason to fire the Justice Minister as he has not done anything wrong. “Fire the Justice Minister for what? the Justice Minister is not in charge of the Judiciary, he does not manage how the Judiciary operates, the Judiciary doesn’t report to the Justice Minister”, he said.
“We understand that we are coming from a background where there was massive interference in the operations of government institutions to such an extent that now that you have a government that is not interfering with the operations of institutions of government, it is becoming abnormal to respect the law because people have been accustomed to lawlessness. How can the Judiciary be reporting to the Executive to say this ruling which is coming tomorrow will be like this, then that Judiciary will not be operating in the framework of separation of powers”, he said.
However, some stakeholders have noted that the Justice Minister should have seen this coming and advised the President appropriately as it is embarrassing for the President to campaign for an election when there are still matters relating to that particular election pending in court. The justice minister should have advised HH against spending 5 days campaigning on the Copperbelt especially after the constitutional court ruling that nullification does not mean disqualification.
A day before filing of nominations for Kabushi and Kwacha Constituencies, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) despite not having the mandate to interpret the laws of Zambia went ahead and announced that it would not accept nominations from candidates who caused a vacancy in the National Assembly, a situation which led to ECZ rejecting Joseph Malanji and Bowman Lusambo’s nominations to recontest for Kwacha Constituency and Kabushi Constituency by-elections respectively, stating that they were not eligible to recontest as their seats had been nullified earlier thereby causing the vacancy.
Lusambo and Malanji challenged ECZ’s decision and petitioned the constitutional court who later ruled that the two candidates parliamentary elections were simply nullified but not disqualified. The Law association of Zambia, a professional body had also given the same guidance in a statement availed to the public.
However, despite all these indications, Justice Minister Mulambo Haimbe, held a Press briefing and stated that the Constitutional Court did not make a pronouncement as to the eligibility of Bowman Lusambo and Joseph Malanji to re-contest the Kabushi and Kwacha Parliamentary seats, respectively. He echoed the views that had earlier been floated by GEARS Initiative Executive Director McDonald Chipenzi – a UPND aligned NGO
Haimbe said the petitioners in Lusambo and Malanji’s case were seeking the Court’s relief on four matters namely, whether the decision by the Electoral Commission of Zambia to reject the dual’s nomination was illegal, null and void and the other matter pertained to whether the applicants are eligible to contest the 15th September, 2022 by elections and whether fresh nominations should be conducted, as well as what is meant by causing a vacancy in the National Assembly.
The Justice Minister noted that from the issues raised, the Court dealt with the issue of causing a vacancy as the other matters were not properly before the court.
Stakeholders feel that this was misleading because the President continued to campaign despite the Concourt’s ruling which meant there was need for fresh nominations in order to accommodate Lusambo and Malanji.
Mweetwa told the ZBT that campaigns were never postponed or stopped by the court, so the campaigns had to carry on adding that the UPND’s campaign teams are currently actively campaign on the ground because the main matter has not been determined by the court.
“Assuming that the court were to say election should continue as it was, how do we at that stage begin to run around campaiging when there was ample time to campaign. That is what the President did, to continue campaigning so that when the elections are finally called in, the party is ready”, he said.
He explained that the stay of the by-elections has no issue on the President’s campaigning adding that the President has a very active schedule, therefore the time which was already designated for him to be in Kabushi should be maximized.
“It is envisaged that when the by-election is finally called in, the President might be held up elsewhere, performing other national duties, there should be no panic, there should be no such a thing as the President has not been to Kabushi to campaign, he has already done his campaign, it will just be a matter of election going ahead”, Mweetwa added.
