Paying servants of the people

Paying servants of the people
By Editor
Tuesday August 19, 2008 [04:00]

In our edition of yesterday, we carried a letter to the editor concerning the salary increment our ministers and other politicians have awarded themselves. In that letter, The Post was criticised for being soft towards daylight robbery by our politicians. This is despite the fact that the previous day, in our Sunday edition, we carried an editorial comment titled “There’s strength in unity” and whose last paragraph read as follows:

“The coming together of opposition political parties, together with civil society, to challenge Cabinet’s decision to increase the salaries of politicians if implemented well will save as a warning to those in government that gone are the days when public resources were shared without opposition.

We would all like our politicians to earn good salaries. But this should be in line with the general performance of our economy and other things happening in the country. Looked at in this way, it’s clear that these increased salaries were ill-conceived and ill-timed. And those in government should blame themselves for the embarrassing opposition they are facing over this issue. It will be impossible for them to marshal public support in their favour.

They will give themselves this salary increment at the back of serious national opposition. It may seem too late for them to withdraw the bill. But it will be fatal for Acting President Rupiah Banda to sign the bill. The best advice we can give them is that they should mull over things and consider the feelings of the people.

This will be the wrong time for them to face nation-wide strikes and campaigns against their increased salaries. This is the wrong time for them to be made to appear so greedy and selfish. Timing is important in everything.”

We don’t understand why this should be seen to be a rather soft approach towards daylight robbery. What are we expected to say or do?

It should be borne in mind that it is The Post that in the first place brought this issue to the public’s attention. And since then we have carried many letters to the editor over this issue. We have also published many columns over this same issue. Again, if this is not enough, what are we expected to do?

The arguments concerning this matter have been very well articulated by contributors to our comment pages in their letters and columns. And we were left with very little to say. But since we are still expected to say more, we will do so.

What the Zambian people are seeking is genuine democracy in which the leaders are servants of the electorate and not its masters.

And it is the masters who pay the servants and not the other way round.

But the arrogance that we have seen from our politicians over this issue is frightening. It suggests that it is them who are the masters and the people are their employees, their servants.

It seems in this country, once politicians are elected into office at any level they can do as they wish and the people have no say or what they say doesn’t matter until the next elections.

We have never in the history of this country seen politicians push for anyone’s salary increment or defend anyone’s salary increment in the way they are doing over their own salaries today.

When workers on the Copperbelt were striking and pushing for a salary increment with Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), our politicians were quiet.

The only word that came from our politicians was that of our President supporting KCM and ordering workers to go back to work. Our university lecturers are today locked in a dispute over their increased salaries, which can’t be implemented. And our politicians are again very quiet about it. What does this mean? Isn’t this selfishness, greed or vanity?

We cannot call others to virtues, which we ourselves do not make an effort to practise.

Politicians, as employees or servants of the people, have a strict duty to give their employers – the people of Zambia – efficient and conscientious work for which they should have a right to a just salary.
But we know that our country today doesn’t have all the resources it needs and our people are still deprived of many essential services they need. We are still living in a time of austerity.

And the austerity required by our circumstances and as a result of our government’s very limited resources needs to be equally shared among all. When those in political leadership have high salaries and are living in luxury, that destroys their capacity to speak in a forthright manner and tell people to tighten their belts and forgo certain services which the government has a duty to provide.

Clearly, good governance only occurs when we have humble, honest and intelligent leaders who see politics as a vocation to serve the people.

Our politicians need to be modest and prudent. They need to guard against arrogance and rashness, and serve the Zambian people heart and soul.

Their point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce themselves from the masses, to proceed in all cases from the interests of the people and not from one’s self-interest or from the interests of a small group, and to identify their responsibility to the people with their responsibility to the leading organs of government.

The leading organs of the state must rely on the masses and their personnel must serve the people. Our politicians must show a spirit of utter devotion to others without any thought of self, with boundless sense of responsibility in their work. They should strive to attain a spirit of absolute selflessness. With this spirit everyone of them can be very useful to the people.

We say this because a politician’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a politician of moral integrity and above vulgar interest, a politician who is of value to the people.

All our politicians, whatever their rank, are servants of the people, and whatever they do should be to serve the people. Their duty is to hold themselves responsible to the people. Every word, every act and every policy must conform to the people’s interests – that is what being responsible to the people means.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that we are in a very difficult struggle to get the great majority of our people out of poverty. And wherever there is a struggle, there is sacrifice. And those who take up leadership positions in this struggle should be ready for sacrifice and should have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart. Nevertheless, they should do their best to avoid unnecessary sacrifices.

It will not pay for our politicians to give themselves salary increments, which are opposed by all their people. Yes, they have the legal rights to do so but there is the political side of things that must be taken into account. If their employers, the people of Zambia, who are supreme over any law are saying no to these salary increments, then there is no law that can justify these salary increments. And if this is so then their act amounts to banditry, to plunder.

Again, we urge all our politicians to mull over things and consider the feelings of the people before the give themselves these salary increments. This is how real democracy works.