Kabimba, Economic Front Party president, calls for removal of immunity on sitting presidents

Economic Front Party president, Wynter Kabimba, has advocated for the removal of immunity for a sitting head of State which protects him from arrest, alleging that it has potential to harbour criminals in statehouse.

He alleged that the law may protect a person who was a criminal to continue until the end of their tenure, which was not right.

Kabimba said in an interview on Saturday with Zambia Monitor that the person who was elected to the office of the president must ensure that they were above reproach and be law abiding.

“We must not give them a moratorium of five years to do wrong things without being arrested or prosecuted, these are things that cause problems in third world countries. A president of a country can be a danger to the state because they were not the state.

“That was why in developed countries like the United States of the America the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) bags the phone of the president because he could be a threat to the state,” he said.

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He recalled that in Zambia the Office of the President did not do that, saying nobody knew who the president talked to and nobody knew whether the people they talked to had the best interest at heart.

Kabimba said in third world countries like Zambia, the nation only got to learn about the wrongdoings of the president when they were out of power and the damage would already have been done.

Meanwhile, Kabimba said the police operated according to the mood of the party that was in power and claimed that the police was acting independently by brutalising people were not true.

“In terms of upholding the rule of law and justice president Hakainde Hichilema is a big letdown. After the things Mr. Hichilema went through at the hands of the Patriotic Front when he was in the opposition everyone expected that he was going to be different,” he said.

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