‘THERE HAS BEEN MISINFORMATION, DISINFORMATION ON LUNGU’S ELIGIBILITY’

CONSTITUTIONAL lawyer Makebi Zulu has said that there has been ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and ‘no information’ with regards to interpretation of the constitution on whether a person can be barred from contesting an election if they have been sworn in twice or been elected twice. He said the two arguments with regards to ‘elected twice’ and sworn in twice’ are not provided for in the current Republican constitution and therefore could not be used as theories to bar President Edgar Lungu from contesting this year’s election. He said the question that arises as to whether a person has been sworn in twice is tied to the question of whether it was a term or not. “Article 106 does constitute what a term is, and states that a term is 5 years and anything less than that is not a term. It defines what holding of office is, it defines what a term is,” Mr Zulu said. He added: “And for purposes of Article 106 the Constitutional Court in interpreting says ‘in determining whether a person has held office twice, you have to determine whether it was a term or not.” “If we discard  these two theories of ‘elected twice and being sworn in twice’ we only remain with ‘having held office twice’ and this is linked to whether or not it was a term,” he said Mr Zulu said lawyers have misinformed the public while politicians have perpetuated disinformation with regards to the matter leading some to act out of ‘no information’. “We as lawyers have misinformed the public and as politicians we have perpetuated disinformation and some people have acted out of ‘no information’ because the people that they should trust have said so,”  he said. Meanwhile Mr. Zulu has said there was no room for the appellants that had been questioning the Head of state’s eligibility to go back to court for another case regarding the same subject as the period in which it can be done has elapsed as it can only be done within seven days of the nomination. #SmartEagles2021