Maravi

Let Rupiah explain his bank’s collapse

Let Rupiah explain his bank’s collapse
Written by Editor

We have on a number of occasions reminded Rupiah Banda and his friends that the exercise of power must be the constant practice of self-limitation and modesty. The way Rupiah behaved on Thursday does not show the constant practice of self-limitation and modesty on his part. What it showed was an arrogant, intolerant and abusive Rupiah. These are very low qualities for a leader, especially one of a multiparty or plural nation.

But all that can happen when a corrupt and arrogant clique is able to take over a political party like the MMD, destroy, humiliate, and crush the best members, and impose its will on the entire nation, based on the strength of corruptly and narrowly won presidential elections.

Rupiah issued so many threats and told so many lies about us on Thursday. We are not trembling, we are not scared by his threats. On the contrary, we turn those threats into a force. It is public knowledge in this country that Rupiah wants to see The Post off the face of this country.

And on Thursday, he declared that he will use the debts that he claims we owe government institutions to close us. Rupiah has visions of us being closed and being scared off by the possibility of that. But the truth is Rupiah has underestimated our ability and the support that we enjoy from the many decent people in our country, our staff’s dignity, courage; and his attacks on us lasted as long as a lit candle lasts in a storm.

If Rupiah thinks he is going to settle differences with The Post through such attacks and threats, he is mistaken! If Rupiah thinks he is going to intimidate us, scare us, bring us to our knees by dint of threats and attacks, he is mistaken! This is what we have always told Rupiah and his friends and this is what we want to say to them today!

Our ideas are very clear, our convictions are very deep, our decisions are very resolute. We are not in the habit of lying like them. Everything we have said has been proved or can be proved to be true, correct or justifiable. There is no one over the last 17 years we have accused of corruption who has not been found to be corrupt by tribunals or the courts of our country. We don’t accuse other people of wrongdoing unjustifiably or without proper basis.

At least all those people we accused of corruption, including Frederick Chiluba, have been found at least with a case to answer by our courts of law. This is a demonstration of our fairness, our honesty and our integrity. We have a lot of dignity and are very sure of ourselves. We are a fearless and honest newspaper, but at the same time very patriotic, very much aware of our rights.

Rupiah has declared war on us. And now we are again forced to mobilise and prepare ourselves, but this won’t make us neglect our tasks, our progressive and creative work and this is why we have to make an extra effort. It is true that this takes up a great deal of our time, it is true that it calls for great energy to defend ourselves and our newspaper, and it is true that it calls for resources. But we have the ability of multiplying ourselves and, in circumstances like this, one journalist becomes two or even three journalists, and when circumstances require, what normally takes two hours to do is done in one, and work goes on as long as necessary. We have the resources within us, in our energy, in our will, and this is why we will make this effort to defend our newspaper from Rupiah’s attacks and attempts to annihilate us.

Others may be used to trembling before threats from people like Rupiah, but not us. Never! And from the bottom of our hearts, we resolve to make whatever efforts will be necessary to fulfill our sacred duties to our country, to democracy and to the respect for human rights.

Circumstances have made this week closely resemble what we had to experience some 10 or so years ago under Chiluba. It is true that time dampens enthusiasm. Our own experience has shown that time multiplies the enthusiasm and adds to it greater awareness. For some months now, Rupiah and his friends have been trying to scandalise us, criminalise us and smear us with all sorts of filth.

They deceived themselves that in this way, they will diminish our credibility in the eyes of our people. But our people have not bought into their lies, our newspaper today continues to have the largest circulation – far beyond the combined circulation of all the newspapers published in our country. And today, our newspaper is beyond dispute the largest and most influential media organisation in our country. This is simply because despite all these lies, propaganda, malice against us, our people do realise and know that we have performed our duty with sufficient honour and integrity. Our staff have shown their ability, their awareness, and today The Post is stronger than ever before.

A newspaper closely linked to the people, with a just, honest policy, it is difficult to destroy it by lies, propaganda and deceit – one can even say it is indestructible. And this is what all the staff of The Post must preserve: the close links with the masses, a just, honest policy. We could have made mistakes, and have done so, but we have always remained loyal to the principle of a just and honest policy. These are the reflections that come to mind following Rupiah’s wild, malicious and insane attacks on us.

But it is very difficult for those who live by the lie, deceit, fraud to believe that other people can be honest and truthful in all their dealings. Probably this is why Rupiah thinks everyone who has invested in a company does what he himself did with his friends at African Commercial Bank where they were busy giving themselves unsecured loans and overdrafts out of depositor’s money and eventually collapsed the bank. Rupiah and his friends were lucky and they got away with it. This shouldn’t have been the case. Rupiah and his friends should have been made to account for depositors’ money that they had squandered or abused.

There has been too much impunity in this country. There are so many people who have collapsed banks and robbed depositors and even the government itself but have gone scot-free. Who doesn’t know that Meridian Bank collapsed with billions of kwacha or tens of millions of dollars belonging to the taxpayer? Nobody to this date has been prosecuted for all that. This impunity must come to an end.

And it is for this reason that we have been seeking honest investigations into the affairs of Zambian Airways so that if there is any wrongdoing on the part of anyone, including ourselves, the law must take its course. We have never condoned wrongdoing from anyone, including ourselves and our friends. We have never sought to be treated in a special way, in a different way from other citizens of our country.

We will never do that. We will always seek to be treated the same way as everyone else and we will never accept anyone treating us differently. And it is for this reason that we support Michael Sata’s call for an investigation into the affairs of Rupiah’s bank. Let Rupiah account for what they did to depositors’ money. And we have every right as depositors of that bank and as a newspaper that lost money in that bank to demand for a probe. This is not malice. In fact, Rupiah should have been better advised that those who live in a glass house do not throw stones. But again, this does not mean that we are putting ourselves at the same level as those who collapsed African Commercial Bank through unbridled insider borrowings. We have never received one ngwee or one cent, or even a free air ticket from Zambian Airways. We put in K16.5 billion and have gotten nothing from that investment. They put in very little in that bank and got more out of it. Let them explain how this happened and how this was possible.

We have the integrity that we claim but we don’t think Rupiah can do the same.

Some foolish person the other day questioned our relationship with Sata. This newspaper has dealt with Sata from its inception. Sata was a newspaper vendor of the Weekly Post from its first edition. The editor of this newspaper worked with Sata at Zambia State Insurance Corporation where Sata was in charge of its subsidiary – Avondale Housing. But this has never given Sata any special privileges as far as The Post is concerned. Sata has even taken this newspaper to court and these stupid people can go and check the records. And right now, we have a libel case against Sata going on in our courts of law. Following the results of the 2006 elections, Sata accused us of having rigged the elections and we have taken legal action against him. Again, these fools can go and check court records. There is no newspaper in this country that has criticised and harangued Sata like The Post. There is no wrongdoing of Sata that we have not exposed or that has been exposed by another newspaper and not us. But during the last elections, Sata conducted himself in a manner no one could punch a hole in. Our reporters were with Sata wherever he went but found nothing wrong in his utterances or actions. We do not concoct stories. And no one else came up with any stories against Sata in the last elections. In fact, Rupiah’s campaign team had to resort to the archives and bring out things we had published before against Sata. We didn’t go to the archives to dig out what Rupiah had done in the past, except when he attempted to deny accusations of electoral corruption. This is the only time we went to the Times of Zambia archives and fished out a story of 1991 in which he was involved in similar corruption. Otherwise, everything that we reported on Rupiah and criticised him on was what he said and did during the campaigns. And we proved every issue that we raised against Rupiah to be true. In no circumstance did we put any words in his mouth or create an action that he was not involved in. Our accuracy and truthfulness in the way we reported the last elections cannot be challenged by anyone. Of course, Rupiah and his friends wanted us to attack Sata. But on what? The truth is Sata had gained a lot of experience in how to conduct himself in an election and Rupiah was totally a novice at these. Even now, Sata is very careful with his politics, with what he says. We don’t know how long this will last. But no one can take away from Sata the fact that he has hit the right code with the people. It is not our duty to take away from other people that which they have earned with their own efforts. And equally, it is not our duty to give people what they have not earned. Therefore, it is very stupid for anyone to insinuate that we have what appears to be an unholy marriage with Sata. What they should do is learn from Sata’s and their own mistakes. This is the only way they will make it difficult for anyone to attack or criticise them. But what they are doing every day is simply engage in corruption and other practices that expose them to attack and criticism from us and others. This is what they should address and not trying to smear us with lies, filth and accusations of having borrowed US $30 million from state institutions or of having defrauded such institutions. We have said several times and we say it again that there is no honest investigation that will find The Post, its shareholders or directors, or employees with any wrongdoing as far as Zambian Airways is concerned.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 8:51 AM