Zambia's President Edgar Lungu. PHOTO | PHILIPPE WOJAZER | AFP 
Zambia's parliament has voted to extend the state of emergency by three months.
“Parliament
has unanimously approved the extension of President Edgar Lungu’s
declaration of a state of 'threatened public emergency in the country',”
reported state radio late Tuesday.
President Lungu
decreed the emergency last week to deal with "acts of sabotage" by his
political opponents, after fire gutted the country's biggest market in
the capital Lusaka. But critics see it as an effort to tighten his grip
on power.
The
Zambian legislators on Tuesday voted to extend the state of emergency
by another 90 days, to give law enforcement agencies "enhanced measures"
to curb "rising cases of politically motivated fires and vandalism of
vital electricity supply lines".
About 48 MPs from the
main opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) were absent
after being suspended for a month by the Speaker following their
boycott of an address by President Lungu in March.
Other
opposition lawmakers boycotted the vote Tuesday by vacating the
chamber, leaving only the 85 members of the president's majority party
to pass the measure.
“The government will then
re-assess [after three months] whether the threat to public security has
been addressed," President Lungu’s spokesperson Amos Chanda said in a
statement Tuesday.
“The measures, to be enforced
through special regulations under the preservation of public Security
Act, were deemed necessary to restore public order and to prevent a
state of public emergency from arising.”
Political
tensions have been high since the detention in April on treason charges
of the country’s largest opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema of UPND.
Mr Hichilema narrowly lost to President Edgar Lungu in the 2016 election, which the opposition alleges was stolen.
The
government has insisted that civil liberties such as free movement had
not been suspended and businesses would be allowed to operate as normal.
Home Affairs minister Stephen Kampyongo said Tuesday that the government would soon arrest the perpetrators of the fires.
"It's
time for boots, for our men to be on the ground. We are going to put
this to a halt. If it will take us lives to have this peace, so be it,"
he said.
Church leaders, among others, have expressed worries that the country was turning into a dictatorship.
Three church bodies, in a strongly-worded statement, called for the release of Mr Hichilema.
-Additional reporting by AFP.
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