By 
Members of Parliament, Anthony Kasandwe, and Melesiana Phiri, have argued that refusal to remit monthly contributions to the Patriotic Front (PF) was not a breach to the party constitution.
They contend that illegally appointed Secretary General, Morgan Ng’ona, ought to cite which provision of the party constitution stated that failure to accept deductions from one’s salary, translated in an automatic resignation.
Read more: PF factions lock horns at Constitutional Court over right to party membership
“There is no provision in the party constitution that makes it mandatory to make monthly aid.
Additionally, the breach of the constitution is as a result of the first and second respondents purporting to accept our resignation in line with the Republican constitution when none of us ever wrote a letter of resignation to the respondents,” Kasandwe said.
The petitioners have insisted that the Constitutional Court should proceed to hear the case as it constituted a breach to the Republican constitution.
“There is no such provision in the party constitution or republican constitution which states that contributions to the party is a condition for being a MP,” they submitted.
Kasandwe and Phiri, therefore, pleaded with the court not to dismiss the petition on point of law as pleaded by Ng’ona .
The petitioners argued that the matter was constitutional in nature and thus failing within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court.
Ng’ona had submitted that the monthly contributions were mandatory and that the decision by Bangweulu Member of Parliament, Kasandwe, and his Milanzi counterpart, Phiri, not to remit the said contribution amounted to resignation.
The petitioners referred to Miles Sampa as a masquerader of a party president who had neither authority nor his Secretary-General, Ng’ona, to expel them from the party.
Ng’ona was alleged to have copied the letters of their expulsion to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Nelly Mutti.
The petitioners, therefore, had turned to the Constitutional Court to declare their purported resignation from the party by Ng’ona as illegal, and an order that the Speaker cannot act on without the written notification of resignation by them.
Kasandwe and Phiri further want the court to declare their purported expulsion from the PF party in line with Article 72 (2) (e) of the constitution null and void for failure to accord them a right to be heard.
Comments