Maravi

All is not well

All is not well
Written by Editor

All is not well in the country. We seem to be going back to the Chiluba years at a very fast rate. Those that are in public service should be prepared to live by the rules of public service. If they are not, they should leave. It seems Rupiah Banda’s government is having difficulties understanding that they are not a private company but trustees meant to run public affairs on behalf of the people.

We say this because from the time that Rupiah assumed the office of President, it seems he has problems with the way that government processes work. His government is struggling to operate transparently and above board. This shows a failure to respect the people that elected them and a failure to appreciate that they are in government to serve, not to massage their egos; let alone their wallets.

There seems to be a state of emergency in the Rupiah Cabinet. The only problem is that this emergency has nothing to do with public interest nor public security. It has to do with doing deals as quickly as possible.

There are some people who seem worried that they only have three years to the next election and are desperate to benefit themselves before that time comes.

There are just too many questionable transactions that have taken place in the last three months that it is difficult to imagine what is going to happen in the next three years. Maybe we will need to find a word stronger than plunder because our friends in MMD do not want to learn from history.

What is happening in Rupiah’s government is not unprecedented. Rupiah is behaving the same way Chiluba did. For those that may have forgotten, it is worth reminding ourselves that one of the things that Chiluba did, and quite effectively so, was to centralise power in State House. All the big transactions in the country were being done from State House. Maize and fertiliser transactions were being controlled at State House. Have people so quickly forgotten the Carlington maize scam where a minister and a State House aide entangled themselves at Chiluba’s instigation in corrupt practices?

Zambia National Tender Board was also a kitchen Cabinet affair. It was controlled from State House. The Zambia National Oil Company was also controlled from State House. Chiluba was so deeply entrenched in the corruption around the oil procurement that he is fortunate not to be prosecuted for it.

One of the things that Chiluba’s government ensured was that government procedures were totally ignored. It became rare to see tenders being advertised in the press. Although people were all powerful at the time and thought that they could get away with this kind of abuse. Consequences have come to visit them long after they thought they had gotten away with it.

We see the same thing happening with Rupiah’s government. The arrogance with which they are dismissing requirements to respect the law does not inspire confidence that all is well. Rupiah and some of his ministers seem to have decided that it is alright to ignore the public concern about the way they are going about using public resources.

It is not long ago that we exposed a flouting of tender processes in connection with the supply of diesel to Zambia. Dalbit Petroleum, a company from Kenya that had not succeeded in the initial tender to supply diesel to our country was being pushed as a suitable supplier by a mysterious force within the corridors of power. Indeed, the Dalbit agent who came to Zambia to pursue the transaction was given a black chauffer-driven government Mercedes Benz complete with an Aide-De-Camp (ADC).

Who in this country has the authority to give a company participating in a tender a government Mercedes, chauffer and ADC? We wait to see where the Dalbit transaction ends.

In the same period, we have seen maize scams that we thought had ended. The hand of Rupiah, through his son James is being connected to the maize confusion in the country and yet Rupiah sees nothing wrong with his sons competing for public business given the office that he holds.

We are still waiting for a logical explanation of why the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) was buying maize from millers whom it supplies with maize. Who were the middlemen between FRA and the millers? Who was buying the maize from the millers?

We have a story about the importation of genetically modified maize into the country connected to James, Rupiah’s son. This kind of information does not engender any confidence in Rupiah’s government. This probably explains why communications and transport minister Dora Siliya can be so arrogant about breaching government regulations. She sees nothing wrong with not following tender processes because it must be commonplace in Rupiah’s government.

Zambia should not be run like a personal farm. How do you explain Dora’s behaviour? In the last 90 or so days, she has been connected to at least three questionable transactions. Not long ago, Dora was in the newspaper contradicting the advice of Secretary to the Treasury Likolo Ndalamei who objected to the single sourcing of a developer for the Kasumbalesa border post. What her ministry has to do with the development of a border post is difficult to understand. But there she was confidently contradicting Ndalamei’s sound advice and insisting that the government was entitled to single-source for US $40 million project.

The question that remains to be answered is: who is behind this so-called Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the Kasumbalesa project?

Not long after this, Dora has been in the news this time for disregarding the Attorney General and his advice on the privatisation of Zamtel. Not only did she disregard the legal advice, Dora also disregarded tender processes and stood before Parliament declaring herself the Ministry of Communications and Transport tender committee with a K7 billion threshold. As Professor Nkandu Luo, one time minister in this same ministry, observed; when did ministers take over the powers of tender committees in the ministries? What is the use of controlling officers now?

Maybe Dora and her boss Rupiah have decided that the permanent secretaries who are the controlling officers are not necessary, the ministers should do everything themselves. Let them quash the position instead of wasting government resources paying controlling officers whose functions are being performed by politicians.

What Dora is doing is simply absurd and wrong. No minister can, by herself, constitute her office into a tender committee. This is criminal. As Given Lubinda says, Dora should take a leaf from Reverend Gladys Nyirongo. In handing down her sentence, Lusaka magistrate Sharon Newa observed that Rev Nyirongo had stopped being a policy maker and constituted herself into a policy implementer, which led to the criminal offences she committed.

As if disregarding the Attorney General and the Secretary to the Treasury is not enough, Dora has gone on record to disregard the Zambia National Tender Board (ZNTB) in the National Airports radar supply. As we observed the other day, Dora has decided to become the expert on the radar equipment by authorising works by SELEX against the advice of ZNTB and the technocrats in her ministry.

These misdeeds are not mere coincidence. There is a pattern and a method to what is going on. All is not well in our country.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DORA SILIYA, PRIVATISATION

posted by MrK @ 7:58 AM