Lusaka Ward councilor wins votes while in prison.

If there is any classic measure for the electorate to love a candidate of their choice, Lusaka Ward in Rukwa Region is where you can find it, as voters in the ward elected their leader when the aspirant was in jail.

When one emerges a winner in an election surrounded by all sorts of intrigues, it is surely a clear demonstration of how people are ready to stop the bullet for you.

This is what has happened to Mr Ameri Nkulu, 56, who was sent to jail while contesting the civic post on a Chadema ticket.

Campaigns in Lusaka Ward were extraordinarily tense. It was difficult to foretell the winner, as Mr Nkulu and his rival contender from the ruling CCM shared a unique appeal and qualifications to the electorate.

In the middle of  all kinds of freaks dominating election campaigns, Lusaka residents wrote their own history by electing a jailed candidate to be their councillor.

Two days before the October 25 General Election, Sumbawanga District Court sentenced Nkulu to six months in jail after he was convicted of fighting in public against the ruling CCM cadre, Mr Christian Kafwimbi. 

Senior Resident Magistrate Rozari Mugissa sentenced Mr Nkulu and his accomplices in acordance with Section 87 of the Penal Code and Section 16 of the Criminal Procedure Act.

Under Section 87 of the Penal Code, any person who takes part in a fight in public is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to a six-month imprisonment or a fine not exceeding Sh500.

Nkulu’s imprisonment, however, only ended up making him popular enough to earn public sympathy. He garnered 2, 121 votes against his main rival on the CCM ticket, Ms Hellena Fungameza, who got 1,851 votes.

One of his lawyers, Mathias Budodi of S. Mawalla Law Consultants said it was absurd that his client was sentenced to jail for an offence that had an option of Sh500 fine.

Nkulu is a veteran politician in his ward, having contested for Parliamentary twice. Hard to die like in the proverbial cat with nine lives, he sucessfully appealed against the judgment at the High Court and was finally released on December 16, last year, after spending 54 days in jail.

Represented by advocate Bartazari Chambi, the politician presented three grounds of appeal. He argued that the lower court had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he fought in public.  He also argued that the court had erred to sentence him to six years in jail for an offence that had an option of a fine, considering he was a first offender.

However, even before Nkulu had filed his appeal, the High Court had heard of the sentence and resolved to work on it. The Court, using its general powers of supervision over all district courts and courts of resident magistrates, ordered submission of records of the case to satisfy itself of the legality and correctness of the decision.

In the final analysis of the appeal, the court found that the sentence meted out by the lower court was disproportionately high compared to the offence, let alone the fact that the convict was a first offender.

Judge-in-charge of the High Court Sumbawanga Zone, Kakusurio Sambo, ordered the immediate release of the appellant on Dec 16, last year.

Soon after he was freed, he was sworn in as councillor and took over the charge of serving his people.