Zambia’s president not shy about discussing Trump indictment when Kamala stays silent

While visiting Zambia on her weeklong, three-nation tour of Africa, Vice President Kamala Harris dodged a question on Friday about the indictment of former President Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

As a former California attorney general,  Harris famously convicted nearly 2,000 people on misdemeanor and felony marijuana charges, then celebrated as President Biden granted pardons to those convicted of pot possession. So, one could argue, Harris knows a thing or two about sham prosecutions.

But when asked to comment about Bragg’s pursuit of her boss’s biggest rival, the vice president had nothing to say.

“I am not going to comment on an ongoing criminal case as it relates to the former president,” Harris told the reporter during a joint press conference with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema.

Hichilema, however, had thoughts.

In a long-winded, roundabout way, he appeared to repeat the Democrats’ current favorite talking point: “No one is above the law.”

https://twitter.com/PTRUMPFORTX2020/status/1641725389721460736?s=20

“The indictment of President Trump — what does that mean to the rule of law? Let’s remove names from your question,” Hichilema said. “Let’s put what we decided we would do to govern ourselves in an orderly manner. [We] passed our constitutions — bedrock law. Then, secondary laws, other regulations create a platform or framework around which we agreed either as Americans or as Zambians to govern ourselves and so to live within those confines.”

“And when there’s transgression against law, it does not matter who is involved,” he continued. “I think that is what the rule of law means. This is universal.”


(Video: Fox News)

The name of the transgressor, according to Hichilema, “does not matter.”

To make his point, he compared the Trump indictment to the corruption found in his nation.

“And here, Vice President, we have a scenario now when we fight against corruption which has taken away resources from children and the sick — sometimes names are thrown into it and perceptions are created that are totally inappropriate,” he said. “Because transgressions against the law, if you take what belongs to the public, you have offended the law and the name does not matter.”

However, critics of the vice president’s trip point out that corruption is rampant in Africa, and few but the African people pay the price.

“Listen, she’s not going to Africa to talk about democracy,” Today News Africa White House correspondent Simon Ateba told BizPac Review in a recent telephone interview. “She’s not going there to talk about human rights, even though that’s what she says.”

“It’s about influence, power, and money,” he stated.

And, as Ateba tweeted on Friday, Zambian opposition leader, Dr. Fred M’membe blasted Harris’s trip, saying America “has killed several African leaders, including Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkruma, Muhammad Gaddafi and cannot lecture Africa about democracy.”

“A country that has toppled so many governments in Africa, that has led so many coups in Africa and other parts of the world, a country that has killed so many leaders in Africa and other parts of the world… today are coming to teach us about democracy,” Dr. M’membe said.

“If you have no respect for the dignity of others,” he continued, “if you have no respect for the sovereignty of other countries, you can not claim to be a champion of democracy.”

 

Melissa Fine

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