LAURA Miti says former president Edgar Lungu should have state security protection.
Miti says the attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump “is why I am of the firm view that president Lungu should have state protection”.
“The protection of our former presidents should have nothing to do with what they do or do not do, say or do not say. They should not even be able to refuse it,” wrote Miti on her Facebook wall yesterday. “The fact that an individual once held the highest office in the land makes them important state property, for life. Their protection should be standard. It should never be reviewed, except in unemotional technical terms that seek to make it better. It should be in the hands of technocrats and security experts. Not politicians.”
Miti, a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, is also Alliance for Community Action executive director.
Trump, who is running for White House, was injured Saturday evening during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI says was an assassination attempt.
According to CNN, the gunman and at least one audience member are dead, the Secret Service said, and two other attendees are critically injured. Trump said on social media that he was shot and hit by a bullet in the “upper part of my right ear.” The Secret Service said the former president is safe after he was rushed off the stage with blood on his face. The FBI has identified the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Authorities say he fired multiple shots from a building rooftop just outside the rally venue, before he was killed by Secret Service agents.
President Joe Biden spoke with Trump after the shooting.
Biden denounced the violence in remarks Saturday night and said in a statement earlier that he’s “grateful” Trump is safe.
By Fanny Kalonda