By GIDEON NYENDWA
NEVERS Mumba has given President Hakainde Hichilema a three-month ultimatum to ensure all ongoing corruption cases are prosecuted and disposed of so that the accused should either be discharged or atone for their actions.
Dr Mumba, the New Hope MMD president has written to President Hichilema asking him to propose a three-month timeframe in which all the corruption cases should be prosecuted and disposed of.
Dr. Mumba said the MMD had become curious about the protests against the hiring of services of private audit firms to audit the country’s defence and security wings and that it was therefore important that the cases were quickly dealt with.
He said he had gone through the law and it had a provision in which the Auditor General could contract a private firm but if there was another law which complemented it to deal with the defence forces then they needed to repeal it as quickly as possible.
“They should repeal it quickly so that we can get in there and know what was happening. We cannot cover it forever. Even MMD contracted private firms when Kenneth Kaunda was being implicated because they wanted an independent mind to investigate the case” Dr Mumba said.
And Dr. Mumba said at a press briefing that the MMD would be writing to President Hichilema to propose an option on how to strengthen the fight against corruption.
He said the prolonged, unregulated process between the arrest and the final court judgement injures both the prosecutor and the accused.
Dr. Mumba said a prolonged fight also exposes the judges to possible compromise and corruption of justice by use of money.
He said the party would propose that a time frame of not more than three months be given to ongoing corruption cases and this would be required to assign courts and judges to the disposing of all the corruption cases within a three month window.
Dr. Mumba said to achieve this, the investigative wings must talk to each other to coordinate this process.
