Maravi

Zambia's corrupt diplomats

Zambia's corrupt diplomats
By Editor
Saturday June 21, 2008 [04:00]

THE statement made by President Levy Mwanawasa that preliminary information he has gathered on the special audit of Zambia’s mission abroad indicate that there is gross abuse of public resources is worrisome but expected. We say worrisome but expected because the type of people we have been sending to our diplomatic missions has not always been of high standards. And the basis on which we have been making appointments to our diplomatic missions also raises a lot of questions of nepotism and outright corruption.

How can we expect people who have been appointed on nepotistic and corrupt basis to be upright in their dealings? In some way, we are actually reaping what we sow.

We shouldn’t forget that corruption sometimes comes in more subtle ways than a serpent and sometimes worse than rats. Rats anaesthetise their victims as they gnaw on them, and they are able to pull off a hunk of a person’s flesh in the middle of the night. That’s the way our corrupt officials gradually anaesthetised the nation and pulled off chunks of its flesh.

All that one needs to be a diplomat is be close to the appointing authorities, either as a relative, friend or ruling party member who cannot be easily deployed locally for various reasons. Being a ruling party member seems to be a way of obtaining privileges and favours of this nature.

it wouldn’t be wrong for one to say that many people join the ruling party more out of self-interest than conviction and a spirit of self-sacrifice or a dedication to public service.

The ruling party seems to exist so that people can obtain privileges. And not because if there is any duty to be done, the one whose duty it is to do it is the ruling party member. The ruling party is increasingly becoming a source of privileges, of corruption, and a source of abuse of office.

We are not one of those that criticise leaders simply to please their opponents. We are not going to be so foolish as not to say something we have the right to say.

We have always had a high opinion of President Mwanawasa as a man of honour, an ethical man. He is certainly one of our country’s most honest politicians. But the way he appoints people to diplomatic missions leaves much to be desired and we have criticised it before in this same column.

Diplomatic missions are not useless jobs where useless relatives, friends and ruling party cadres are dumped or pensioned off. These are very important jobs in the highly globalised world in which we today live and in which most of our problems require global solutions. Our faith lies in the tremendous strength of ideas, in what we have learnt about the value of ideas and of knowledge. And yet there are still dangers, so we should always try more and more, educate those who represent us in other countries.

We say this because today the globalised world forces you to have more and more knowledge and to look for and find global solutions. This can only be achieved if we have honest, incorruptible, knowledgeable, dedicated and selfless diplomats. This cannot be achieved if we continue to appoint people to diplomatic jobs in a corrupt and nepotistic manner.

We should start to believe strongly in ideas and believe in awareness, in knowledge, in culture, and especially in political culture. We should devote more time to creating an awareness, and we should have great faith in education and culture, especially in political culture. We shouldn’t forget that we live in a world that lacks political culture.

The quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing. Of course, we are not trying to minimise, in the slightest sense, the importance of material needs - we always have to give them priority, because in order to study, to achieve a higher quality of life, certain needs have to be satisfied - and those are physical, material needs.

And as President Mwanawasa has correctly pointed out, our public servants, our diplomats and indeed all our people need to realise that our government, our country doesn’t have sufficient resources - it is ranked among the world’s poorest countries. therefore, we should truly exercise prudent management of the meagre resources available to us.

To get our country out of poverty and on the road to prosperity needs several decades of intense effort, which should include, among other things, the effort to practice strict economy and combat waste and corruption, that is, the policy of moving our people out of poverty through diligence and frugality.

The principle of diligence and frugality should be observed in everything, we must pay special attention to economy. Thrift should be the guiding principle in all government expenditure. It should be made clear, as President Mwanawasa has done, that corruption will not be tolerated.

We should always bear in mind that it is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one from the other.

We invite everyone, the entire nation, to take part in the fight against corruption, whether petty thievery or grand larceny that takes place. It is clear to us that all these things are happening because of a lack of deep economic, political and social awareness we have failed to inculcate in our people.

We should think about that more than anything else: our failings, our mistakes, our inequalities, our injustices. We should all be involved in this battle against vices, against the diversion of public resources. We have several thousands of parasites that don’t produce anything, that don’t want to do serious and honest work, yet want to get rich.

It will be interesting to see how President Mwanawasa will deal with the culprits of this corruption that has rocked our missions abroad.

He has already told the nation that the preliminary information he has gathered indicate that there is gross abuse of public resources. We say this because of the special or close relationship these people have with himself or the ruling party.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DIPLOMATIC SERVICE

posted by MrK @ 3:43 AM