TREASON ... WHAT A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD TO APPLY POLITICALLY

...Paradoxically, United States, acclaimed the frontier of democratic excellence, has had no less than four Presidents assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, James Garfield, and John Kennedy. Ronald Reagan survived by God`s Grace.

POLITICALLY, asserted often enough, those who kill with a sword shall get killed with a sword.

Religiously under the Mosaic Law, a murderer should get paid in the same coin murdered.

Judicially, murder crime boomerangs against the culprit: this capital crime carries a minimum sentence of 15 years, life-jail or death.

Every society world-wide, is given to believe and holds the deepest conviction, that human life is so priceless incomparably… and, therefore, should be protected for the common good individually and collectively.

For national protection, commonly in the western world, it is enforced through legislation of Treason Act as a positive way of deterring coup-plotters as well as maintaining peace and security in national interest.

The truth holds: human life, measured through peace, happiness and glorious living, is based on governmental abilities to maintain and sustain peace and security as obliged.

Currently in Zambia, Treason Law and Act provisions compatibly, have raised a huge storm of debates ceaselessly. Rational and irrational arguments and contentions are, still, being aired pertaining to the provisions, enforcement and, poignantly, the interpretation of the whole act as embedded in the supreme Statute Book.

Zambia, rightly or wrongly, treats – as the majority of countries do - treason top - most among the capital crimes carrying unbailable incarceration. In all, Zambia has legislated six capital crimes, taking the gravity of the offence in consideration.

In penal law and interpretation, adopted and replicated in universality, treason is equated to death which, with no exceptions, spares noone – the accused have to suffer the wrath of the law.

The peace-loving citizenry, nevertheless, find nothing dreadful in the enforcement of the Treason Act while, on the contrary, viewing it as the bastion constituting the peace and safety so needed nationally.

In the liberal sense of mind – reading, the Treason Act was enacted with all good intentions and purposes: to restrain and punishing the wicked; to serve as the bulwark of human liberties; for protecting public and individual peace and freedoms as well as maintaining economic prosperity.

Where and when treason insurgence staged by a clique with vested political interests, the rule of law gets halted forthwith. The outcome is, usually, too ghastly to contemplate, neither to redress.

The plotters’ core-ambition is nothing shorter than government take-over, by hook or crook. What follows, thereafter, is a confused and confusing scenario!

In their strategically plot, they target slaying the president and cabinet ministers, unfailingly, mercilessly at instant! Other captives face, more or less, untold bloodbath!

Posing a knotty question: what precursor, politically, induced a series of coups staged initially in European countries?

Answer, the awesome brutalities their kingly rulers inflicted on the ruled.

The baneful scourge dates back spanning three- millennia - 1,000 years BC and 2,000 AD - contrived, in that bygone era, to redress the mass sufferings.

Since the power of rulership is so covetable, and irresist- ible, even the bona-fide rulers found themselves toppled. In the liberal view – point, therefore, there is hardly differentiation separating acceptable from inacceptable coups.

Take Julius Caesar, emerged as a Cult of Personality, was venerated both as Roman Emperor – cum- Military – Command-in-Chief. A deeper-wider –minded writer who introduced and delineated the Julian Calendar bearing his name, depicting one year, month, week and a day.

Shockingly, the intensity of veneration bestowed upon him, was the sole cause of his assassination. Yet, during his reign, Italy went topping the world in military, economic, scientific, educational, construction and musical fields of development.

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ put aside, the annals of world leaders lists Julius Caesar second to noone, based on brutal intensity. You need to know: the English word, brutal, was derived from Caesar`s most treacherous assassin, Marcus Jonius Brutus.

Conspicuously, he emerged first to throw the first among 17 spears fired by each of the hired assassins, 17 in total. He was brutally speared dead as he stood up to address a spurious convened gathering of leaders in the Roman Senate House.

His assassination, thereafter, marked the very beginning of coups breaking out, in ensuing years and centuries, the world over.

Paradoxically, the United States, acclaimed the frontier of democratic excellence, has had no less than four Presidents assassinated - Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, James Garfield, and John Kennedy. Ronald Reagan survived by God`s Grace.

In our beloved Zambia, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding father of this nation foiled five attempts of assassination. God knows best his life span.

….In our beloved Zambia, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding father of this nation foiled five attempts of assassination. God knows best his life span.

Currently, world countries have made head-way, individually and collectively, in nipping coups in the bud. This has been achieved through the function, essence and existence of robust intelligence services manned with optimum efficiency.

To say aptly, no folly is more costly than the folly of attempting to stage a coup. Best reminded: those who kill by the sword die by the sword, and capital punishment follows upon coup plotters.

Even the mass slaughtering, repentant French Emperor, Louis Napoleon, decried: Whatever belligerence, for whatever vested interest, human killing is the business of barbarians