By Augustine Mukoka
REVOKE BINWELL’S BENCH WARRANT: It’s An Oppressive Tool Aimed At Restricting His Right To Participate In This Election
The reported issuance of a bench warrant against former Nkana MP Binwell Mpundu, a close ally of NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile, at the height of an election campaign deserves the closest public scrutiny.
Lusaka Principal Magistrate Webster Milumbe should remember that the judiciary’s greatest asset is not its power to issue warrants, but the public’s confidence in its independence and impartiality.
Where criminal proceedings involving prominent political actors coincide with an active election campaign, every judicial decision will inevitably be examined through the lens of constitutional rights, due process, and judicial neutrality.
History offers important lessons. Judicial officers who are perceived—rightly or wrongly—to have become instruments in politically charged prosecutions have often found their reputations permanently diminished when political circumstances changed.
Courts are expected to rise above partisan contests, not become participants in them.
Around the world, judicial and prosecutorial officials have also faced international sanctions where they were found to have participated in serious abuses of the rule of law or the suppression of democratic processes.
The United States has, for example, sanctioned members of Venezuela’s Supreme Court over rulings viewed as undermining democratic institutions and has also sanctioned Nicaraguan judicial officials accused of facilitating politically motivated repression of government critics. Magistrate Milumbe doesn’t want to join this list.
You need not like Binwell; neither do you have to support him. The overriding concern should be that justice must not only be done—it must be seen to be done.
If Miles Sampa is freely on the campaign trail for the ruling party, why not Binwell for the opposition? Where is this desperation coming from?
Courts should exercise particular caution in politically sensitive cases to ensure that no reasonable observer concludes that the judicial process is being used to influence the democratic contest.
The judiciary remains one of the final guardians of constitutional democracy. Every decision made during an election period should reinforce public confidence in that institution rather than
diminish it.
Magistrate Milumbe has an example in one David Simusamba when the former magistrate excitedly discharged his duties during a volatile election period.
Binwell’s sedition charge is a mockery, the trial a waste of time and public resources as well as an inconvenience on him.
The bench warrant is therefore a tool of oppression and must be revoked unconditionally.