CHURCH MOTHERS BODIES, LAZ, CSOS CALLED OUT
...for remaining silent in the face of the injustices being perpetrated by the UPND, putting the country’s democracy under siege
IT is hypocritical for the Church to wine and dine with the Executive in the face of numerous injustices including indefinetly incacerating political prisoners, the breakdown of the rule of law and attempts to convert the country into the dreaded one party State being perpetrated by the UPND government, Brebnar Changala has said.
Mr Changala has therefore called on the country’s three Church mother bodies, the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ), the civil society organisations and all opinion leaders to rise and begin to condemn and speak against the rising social and political injustices being perpetrated by the UPND government.
He says he is deeply worried that the country’s justice system had become so unjust to the extent that citizens are losing confidence and hope in the judicial system which he has accused of having been compromised by the executive.
Meanwhile, Mr Changala said the UPND government should be called to order because the doctrine of the Separation of Powers has completely been destroyed as the Judiciary and the Legislature had been hijacked by the Executive.
Mr Changala, the civil rights and political activist says it is hypocrisy of the highest order for the Church, LAZ, the CSOs and indeed Zambians who are opinion leaders to have chosen silence in the face of growing dictatorship which has placed the country democracy under siege.
He said it was disheartening that Emeritus Archbishop Telesphore Mpundu had become a target of nihilistic political malice by the governing elite with its surrogates who have now started baying for his blood for only characterizing President
Hakainde Hichilema as a dictator who should not be allowed to go beyond his first.
But Mr Changala said it was shocking that the three Church mother bodies along with LAZ and the CSOs had remained quiet while the governance system was degenerating at the hands of President Hichilema and his UPND government.
“Zambia and its democracy are under siege and we are watching. Zambians are being arrested and thrown into police cells for months without being taken to court…I am thinking of Rizwani Patel and two other PF members who was arrested and charged with aggravated robbery for a case of assault. We have cases with high emotions and sensitive such as the matter of the PF in which they have sued expelled Matero Member of Parliament which has never taken off because the Judiciary has become a garage and a filing cabinet where charged political cases are either parked or filed,” Mr Changala said.
He said this was the first time the three Church mother bodies, the LAZ and the CSOs had remained so quiet while citizens were being harangued by the State only on grounds of not being members of the governing elite.
Mr Changala has advised the UPND to put its house in order and desist from abusing citizens such as Archbishop Mpundu who had sacrificed his all to make sure the UPND formed government in 2021.
He said without the combined efforts of Archbishop Mpundu who had sacrificed his all with other stakeholders such as the Church, President Hichilema and the UPND would never have formed government because even at that time, the ruling party had remained unpopular among many Zambians.