VICE-President George Kunda may one day face treason charges, former secretary to the Cabinet Sketchley Sacika stated yesterday.

In a media statement issued in Lusaka, Dr Sacika stated that government’s talk about media regulation was a smokescreen designed to hide a more sinister motive, which is the desire by the MMD government to re-establish a totalitarian one-party state where they would rule Zambia unchallenged with a token of opposition political parties in Parliament to fool gullible Zambians and the donor community.

“Bringing all local news output under government control is the final stage in this programme. The first stage was to bring all state institutions under the control of the MMD and this has been accomplished. As things stand, there is not a single state institution in Zambia, which is not an appendage of the MMD. Political commissars now run our district administration as district commissioners; political commissars now run our ministries as permanent secretaries, political commissars now head all our government institutions including parastatal organisations,” Dr Sacika observed. “The controversy over the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Judiciary should be viewed in the context because the hallmark of any totalitarian one-party state is the subjugation of state institutions to the political party in power and the MMD has achieved this.”

He stated that what the MMD had achieved was tantamount to a coup d’état against the constitutional order of Zambia and was a danger to democracy.

Dr Sacika stated that under the existing conditions, free and fair elections were not guaranteed.

“If the Electoral Commission, which consists of the appointees of the President, rigs the elections, our courts of law will not annul the fraudulent elections because the Judiciary is politically compromised. This is what happened in 2001 when the courts decided not to annul a presidential election, which had been stolen,” Dr Sacika stated. “The MMD is the only political party that uses huge sums of public funds and public facilities and institutions for its operations and it does so illegally. But the courts are powerless to do anything about it because the unwritten rule is that the ruling party is free to enjoy the fruits of incumbency.”

Dr Sacika stated that the MMD and Vice-President Kunda’s plan to re-establish totalitarian one-party state was a recipe for social and political disorder in Zambia.

“The language of George Kunda is that of a person who thinks that he owns the state and that his personal interests are synonymous with those of the state. This is dangerous because people who think like him will do anything, including eliminating their political opponents, to stay in power,” observed Dr Sacika.

“But no condition is permanent in life; there is a beginning and an end to everything. Whoever thought that the Khmer Rouge government officials in Cambodia, who misruled their country more than thirty years ago, would today find themselves in court on genocide charges? One day, George Kunda may find himself in the same position answering treason charges arising from the coup d’état his political party has carried out against the constitutional order of our country.”


(The Post)