Staff Reporter

Norton Independent legislator, Temba Mliswa has lambasted journalist and Government critic Hopewell Chin’ono for allegedly lacking appreciation and acceptance of people occupying public offices, accusing him of being used by the West to attack Zimbabwe.

This follows Chin’ono’s criticism of legislators over remuneration issues after the later pleaded with the Government for a salary review.

Posting on his Twitter handle yesterday, Mliswa accused Chin’ono of trying to appease the West, in a view to remain on the payroll of the foreign powers and to let his criminal charges involving a credit card case concealed.

“Your lack of appreciation or acceptance of people occupying offices does not entail you also lack respect for the office itself. It’s short sighted and anomalous to attack the office of the legislators just because you don’t like the personnel in it. Your preferred candidates will also find it hard to operate in it as long as it is not respected and capacitated as I’am advocating for.

“You are being over righteous and I challenge you to declare your assets and tell us the source of your money. You have an agreement with the Western world to attack the country so that you don’t get arrested for the credit card fraud you committed,” said Mliswa

Mliswa added that he once lived in Slough in the United Kingdom with the journalist, where he fraudulently made money through a credit cards scam.

Mliswa revealed that he defended Chin’ono when he was arrested over the credit card fraud issue, as a matter of principle and not because he was being paid. “Iwe unongoda zvevarungu, manje nyangwe wakatsvuka haute murungu,” he said.

Mliswa said the issue of salary review for legislators is about dignity, integrity and credibility of the office.