Maravi

Expecting too much from politicians

Expecting too much from politicians
By Editor
Tuesday August 05, 2008 [04:00]

We think that sometimes we tend to expect too much from our political leaders. These are not angels or super human beings; they are ordinary citizens like us who have become leaders sometimes by pure accident or extraordinary circumstances.
While we agree with the demand for high levels of accountability among those that offer themselves for political leadership jobs, we think there is need to realise that the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards and common aims and values.

We support the call by Kabwata member of parliament Given Lubinda for the enactment of laws that could compel ministers and parliamentarians to disclose their assets and liabilities publicly. Lubinda warns that the failure by ministers and members of parliament to disclose how much they are worth compromises the fight against corruption and Zambians have the right to know how some government officials have managed to amass so much wealth in so little a time.
We don’t think to focus exclusively on the corruption of our politicians will yield the desired results. We think it is important to enact laws that make it very difficult for every citizen to get away with corruption and keep the fruits of dishonest dealings.

Enacting laws that require strict accountability from political leaders but allow ordinary citizens to easily get away with corruption will not achieve much. We say this because political leaders do not engage in corruption by themselves; they invariably involve ordinary citizens in their efforts to rape the nation. We need laws that will require every citizen to account for what they have and how they got it. If this is not so, it will be very easy for political leaders to hide their loot from corruption with their relatives and friends. And that is the end of the story – corruption continues unabated.

What we need is an environment that makes it difficult for anyone to accumulate wealth whose source they cannot explain. This will not be new. We had such laws in the Second Republic. We had SITET, an institution that followed people and asked them to explain the sources of their wealth. This is how even the nation came to know about the mandrax trafficking. Some citizens had started to accumulate a lot of money in hard currencies whose source was not clear. SITET confiscated the money and asked them to explain before it could be released to them.

And this used to be common practice in most Zambian families. If one came home with something whose source they could not explain to the satisfaction of their parents or guardians, they were told to take it back before they brought problems and shame to the household. But today we see parents receiving big things from their teenage children who are mere clerks in a bank or some other company without questioning how these youngsters got such expensive things that are far beyond their earned incomes.

Again this brings us back to the point we earlier made: the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards and common aims and values.

Our political leaders are very much part of us; they arise from the same communities and backgrounds as the rest of the population. The type of political leaders we have are not very different from us. So if we have to change them and improve their attitude, we have to start with the communities from which they are coming and to which they will go back.

Every human being’s life in this world is inevitably mixed with every other life and, no matter what laws we pass, no matter what precautions we take, unless the people we meet are decent and honest, then there is very little we can achieve in our efforts to create a more honest, fair, just and humane society.
Integrity, decency and honesty primarily come from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.
At many stages at the advance of humanity, conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress.

Our country – this great Republic – means nothing unless it means the triumph of real democracy, the triumph of a popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each individual shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him or her.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results.

First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by the corruption of his own and unhampered by the corruption of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned.

Second, equality of opportunity means that the nation will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of corruption can give the nation that service to which it is fairly entitled. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for corrupt elements. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all crimes.

It is true that the material problems that face us today are not as they were seventeen years ago, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered circumstances we war with the same tendencies towards evil that were evident over seventeen years ago, and are helped by the same tendencies for good.

The growth of our nation’s wealth, instead of bringing comfort to the masses of the people, is imposing additional burdens on them. At the bottom of the social scale, there is a mass of poverty and misery equal in magnitude to that which obtained in our economy’s most difficult days. We submit that the true test of progress is not the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, but the elevation of a people as a whole.

Let us therefore boldly face corruption, resolute to do our duty well; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use incorruptible and practical methods.

Labels: GOVERNANCE, MINISTERS, TRANSPARANCY

posted by MrK @ 4:17 AM