Maravi

No doctor, lawyer can save Chiluba

No doctor, lawyer can save Chiluba
By Editor
Monday May 21, 2007 [04:00]

Our country is not flourishing. The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nation is not being used sensibly. But all this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We leaned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves.

Concepts such as common good, love, friendship, compassion or humility lost their depth and dimensions, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone astray sayings from the ancient times. Only a few of us we were able to cry out loudly that the powers that be were stealing and abusing public resources.

Frederick Chiluba - armed with his crookedness, arrogance and an intolerant attitude - silenced and corrupted many people to give himself space for stealing public resources while remaining popular and unquestioned. This is why when we talk about contaminated moral atmosphere, we are not only talking about Chiluba and the friends he was stealing with. We are talking about all of us.

We had all become used to a corrupt system, to deception and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all - though naturally to differing extents - responsible for Chiluba's operation of a corrupt system of government in our country; none of us is just its victim; we are also its co-creators. Why do we say this? It would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the Chiluba era as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed us.

On the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to all of us, and up to us only, to do something about it. We cannot blame those who worked with Chiluba and others who ran various government institutions under Chiluba, not only because it would be untrue but also because it could blunt the duty that each of us faces today, namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly. Let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own.

And it would also be wrong to expect a general remedy from them only. This requires the participation and therefore responsibility from all of us. If we realise this, hope will return to our hearts. Everywhere in the world people wonder where these meek, humiliated, skeptical and seemingly cynical Zambians have found the marvelous strength to deal with Chiluba and his thefts in a strong but decent and peaceful way.

Dr Kenneth Kaunda and his comrades based their politics on morality. Let us try in a new time and in a new way to restore this concept of politics. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community, of the nation rather than of a need to cheat, loot or rape the community or nation.

Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be not only the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals, and pragmatic maneuvering, but that it can even be the art of the impossible, namely, the art of improving ourselves and our world. The way we are dealing with Chiluba's corruption and thefts has won us a lot of respect the world over.

Let us not allow the sympathies of the world which we have won so fast to be equally rapidly lost through our becoming entangled in the jungle of skirmishes these corrupt elements, these thieves and their sympathisers want to impose on us. We should ask ourselves what kind of a Zambia we dream of.

And let us reply: we dream of a Zambia independent, free and democratic, of a Zambia economically prosperous and yet socially just, in short, of a humane and fair Zambia which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn.

Of a Zambia of well-rounded people, because without such, it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social or political. Our struggle against corruption and our attempts to bring Chiluba to account and be punished for his thefts is a struggle for the souls and the future of Zambia. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now, in the unfolding life and history.

There is such a thing as being too late. We must work unceasingly to ensure that the limited resources of this country are used in an honest, efficient, effective and orderly manner so as to help lift this nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, justice, fairness and humaneness. We are not saying those who govern our country should be men and women who can never make mistakes. Even Dr Kaunda made many mistakes.

But not for personal gain, never. He did what he believed in. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. But this was not the case with Chiluba. His thefts cannot be said to have been mistakes - they were deliberate, well calculated conspiracies to defraud the Zambian people.

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it's a good place for all of us to live in - not just a small group that manages to steal public resources. The true test of progress is not the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few who manage to steal, but the elevation of a people as a whole.

The Zambian people know to their cost the danger which comes from allowing men to grow rich and permitting them to use their wealth to corrupt the nation, to silence everyone, including the pulpit, to degrade our national life, and to bring reproach and shame upon a great people, in order that a few unscrupulous scoundrels might be able to add to their ill-gotten gains. Zambia is in trouble today not necessarily because her people have failed, but because her leaders have failed.

And what Zambia needs are leaders to match the greatness of her people. The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. And in seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract a little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing. Some will say there is no need to focus and pay so much attention on Chiluba's thefts we should concentrate on the present corruption.

Hence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles. We faced a lot of problems trying to warn the nation that if Chiluba's corruption is left unchecked there will be problems after he leaves office. We stated this repeatedly in our editorial comments.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it, deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor as Chiluba did is the meanest of all crimes.

Equally, to assist Chiluba to escape justice, to help him avoid being made to account for his thefts is also a crime. And one cannot hide behind a profession to abate crime. It doesn't matter whether one if a doctor or a lawyer, aiding Chiluba to evade justice is criminal. What they should do is to help Chiluba to face justice.

We hear that they are bragging that the London High Court judgment will not be registered here for enforcement. Who assured them of that? Where is this confidence coming from? Whatever they do, whatever connivance they are going to engage in they will not be able to stop the enforcement of this judgment because the law is very crystal clear on this score. We know that Chiluba is not ready to face any independent tribunal. He ran away from the London High Court when he realised it was serious and independent tribunal.

He is also running away from the criminal proceedings in Lusaka, especially after realising that these were serious and independent tribunals which he can't manipulate. But trying to stay away from court forever will not help him because things can't go on like this forever - he has stretched his luck too far. There is no doctor or lawyer who is going to succeed in making Chiluba evade justice.

Those who may attempt to do this are merely risking their whole careers because the people are determined to see to it that justice prevails and Chiluba gives back to Caesar that which he stole from Caesar.

Labels: CHILUBA, EDITORIAL

posted by MrK @ 6:27 AM