National Restoration Party (NAREP) president Elias Chipimo has strongly castigated President Michael Sata for defending justice minister Wynter Kabimba’s unruly behavior when he appeared for corruption interrogation at the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) this week.
President Sata yesterday defended Kabimba for ferrying busloads of PF cadres to the ACC offices when he was summoned for interrogations over corruption allegations. He said on Thursday that the ACC should first tell him about the senior people in his government it was investigating.
But Chipimo said Kabimba’s behavior at the ACC was totally unacceptable and that it was regrettable that President Sata was condoning such instead of condemning his minister.
He said the reason why stakeholders were calling for the suspension of Kabimba and defence minister Geoffrey Mwamba who are both facing corruption allegations were to restrain them from interfering with investigations.
Chipimo was sad that the PF leaders were still behaving as if they were still in the opposition even after over a year in government. He said Kabimba’s behavior could have been excused if government was six months in office but that they have now matured to behave properly.
“It is unfortunate that President Sata is condoning such behavior. The reason why we were saying the two ministers should step down is to avoid a situation where they will be intimidating the ACC,” he said.
Kabimba’s counterpart, GBM who is also facing corruption allegations, appeared at the ACC offices in a low key style devoid of cadres and a media frenzy that characterised the justice minister’s show up.