Antonio accuses M’membe of engaging in tax evasion
PF deputy media director Antonio Mwanza says if former Post newspaper editor-in-chief Dr Fred M’membe was in America, he would have been in jail, by now, for tax evasion.
And Mwanza says opposition political parties come short of blaming the Pope when they lose elections.
Meanwhile, National Democratic Congress (NDC) spokesperson Saboi Imboela laughed at Mwanza, seeing how “he defends wrong things.”
Speaking on Prime TV’s Oxygen of Democracy programme on Monday night, Mwanza said Zambia was governed by laws and that one such law was about taxation.
Mwanza was responding to a text message by a Mr Chali, who sought his comment on “cost exaggeration on funded projects, fire engines, ambulances, the recent private jet, closure of The Post and lack of protection on journalists” by the PF government.
“He talked about Fred M’membe and The Post newspaper; please, we have laws in this country and one of them is to be paying taxes. Actually, Fred M’membe is very lucky that he is in Zambia. In America he would have been in jail by now [for] tax evasion and all those scandals that he was lumped with. He would have been in jail! Let us not glorify wrongdoing,” Mwanza responded.
Post Newspapers Limited that Dr M’membe led as managing director and editor-in-chief allegedly owed the Zambia Revenue Authority a disputed ZMW53 million. The newspaper company was compliant in its tax obligations save for the disputed figure that it even went to the Tax Tribunal to reconcile the figures. The Tax Tribunal ruled in favour of Post Newspapers Limited and ordered that the company that was closed over the tax dispute be opened and allowed to pay within an agreed timeframe but those intent on annihilating it disregarded the order and proceeded to liquidate the company.
Tax evasion, as imputed by Mwanza, is “the illegal non-payment or underpayment of tax”.
On the same programme, Imboela said she did not know the kind of magic the PF would have to play to get back in power in 2021.
“You saw Roan being a litmus paper where money does not make a difference when people decide who they want to vote for. They cannot retain power because they have failed. Look at our currency; it’s performing badly against all major currencies,” she said.
Mwanza, however, countered, saying: “if you look at the slate of elections that we have had, the Patriotic Front has scooped 90 per cent of all the by-elections.”
He added that when the opposition lost an election, they blamed everyone, i.e. the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), the police and the governing PF.
“You come short of blaming the Pope! [But] when you win an election, you say ‘there is wind of change!’ You don’t even talk about ECZ, the police,” Mwanza charged.
“We must be responsible enough as opposition political parties – let us provide alternative policies. If you listen to the opposition in this country, it’s what we call manyengwe (child’s play).”
Asked by the programme host, Alexander Musokotwane, if concerns and comments from civil society organisations and other political parties regarding how the government system was mistreating critical voices mattered to him, Mwanza exclaimed: “Oh! The civil society [organisations] have to eat.”
“They have a donor and they must sing the chorus of the person who is giving them money and in all these instances, these are white donors,” he noted.
Reminded that his type of politics before joining the PF was different and if the real Mwanza was the one praising the government now or the one who was critical of it, then, Mwanza, a former opposition FDD spokesperson, said: “I have got a vein here; you can check the blood.”
“The blood is for Antonio, the same Antonio you find in Kalingalinga is this same Antonio. I’m the deputy media director for the Patriotic Front [and] I have a duty to espouse, promote and defend the ideals of the Patriotic Front. Every individual has a constitutional right to belong to a political party of their choice,” Mwanza responded.
“My colleague here (Saboi) was in UPND before she came into NDC [but] you have not asked her that question. So, you want to infringe on my constitutional right to belong to a political party of my choice? Or maybe it’s a crime to belong to PF? Is it a crime to belong to PF? It’s a constitutional right and so, I shouldn’t be asked why I belong to PF.”
Imboela then chipped in and said: “the Antonio [who was] in FDD and the Antonio in PF are two different people. The way he defends wrong things! (Laughs)”
Earlier, Imboela said Zambia was in “a very sorry state.”
“I don’t even want to look at Zambia as a democracy – constitutionally we are not even a democracy yet. These are things that the ruling party, for example, should be working towards to ensure that constitutionally we do achieve our state as a democracy,” Imboela explained, stressing that democracy was a very serious business.
“The biggest problem of not being a constitutional democracy is that it’s prone to abuse when you have a group of people at a certain time that can govern a State who are irresponsible. That is what is happening right now; the current leaders or representatives of the people that we have chosen are people that are not very careful with where Zambia is supposed to be. There is an issue of periodic elections, there is an issue of separation of powers which we don’t have at the moment because we are seeing an over-bearing executive.”
She argued that what Zambia adopted in 1991 was not “really democracy [but] plural politics.”
“With plural politics you can have elections and we’ve been having that [but] what we neglected to do from 1991 was to go back to the legal framework of the country and change the laws so that we make Zambia a democracy,” underscored Imboela.
Mwanza, in response, said it was shocking that Imboela could say Zambia was not a democracy.
“If we are not a democracy, we couldn’t even be here talking about the NDC and the PF; we would have the one party State the way it was during the Kaunda era,” said Mwanza.
