Nevers’ tenure ended 2017 - witness
NEVERS Mumba’s tenure of office as MMD president came to end in 2017 as agreed by the majority national executive committee (NEC) members from the provinces, party vice president Reuben Sambo has said.
This is in a matter in which acting National Secretary for the Nevers Mumba faction-led MMD Winnie Zaloumis sued Felix Mutati, Raphael Nakacinda, George Kangwa and Mwansa Mbulakulima who are challenging the legality of the convention that saw them into office as new leaders of MMD.
When the matter came for continued hearing before High Court Judge Sharon Newa, Rev Sambo told the court that according to the party’s constitution, the party’s convention was supposed to be held in 2016 but the NEC agreed that the convention be held in 2017.
He recalled that on January 30, 2016 a NEC meeting was called and one of the agenda items was to deal with the review of the convention because six months prior to that, the NEC had made resolutions on the calling of the NEC convention.
He however observed that there was a difference of terms of office whose mandate of the NEC and presidency was going to expire in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Rev Sambo testified that the party decided to write to five legal firms to seek their opinions on the holding of the elections in which they rendered their opinions and it turned out they agreed that the term of office for presidency was ending in 2016 and the NEC had an authority to hold a national convention. in terms of views,” he said. He said NEC was mandated to make rules in terms of conventions adding that the committee considered Article 42 when arriving at the decision of holding elections at party level which clearly states that elections of the party positions shall not take place until the president was duly elected.
And another witness Florence Malachi, Lusaka Province Chairperson who has been a member of the MMD for 20 years has told the court that she was surprised to see that the same people who left the party were the ones appearing on the petition.
“This is illegal in the sense that it was signed by the people who had no mandate in the party because they left and their positions were filled up,” she has stated.
The provincial chairlady refused ever having sight of the petition but that she was seeing the letters for the first time in court.
In cross examination the witness said according to the party’s constitution a convention should be held after five years and the last convention was supposed to be held in 2016.