Maravi

Stop it!

Stop it!
Written by Editor

It’s not only Dora Siliya who breached the Constitution. Rupiah Banda and George Kunda have taken the public platform and declared their disregard for the Constitution. It is not long ago that Rupiah stood at the Lusaka International Airport and told the nation that Dora had done nothing wrong. He went on to say that she was smarter and more intelligent than those criticising her. But what is important is what he went on to say about the Attorney General.

Rupiah was openly very critical of the Attorney General and the advice that he had given regarding the RP Capital Partners Limited transaction. He even went further to insinuate that the Attorney General was lawless and was the one who leaked Dora’s memorandum of understanding with RP Capital Partners Limited to the press.

More recently, Rupiah has made it clear that he has no regard for the advice of the Attorney General regarding RP Capital. We say this because although the Attorney General advised that there was everything wrong with the RP Capital contract, Rupiah and his friends are determined to carry through Dora’s MoU.

And to achieve that, Rupiah has said he is taking the RP Capital MoU to Cabinet. Is Rupiah immune from taking legal advice? Why is he so determined to proceed with an obviously scandalous transaction?

As President, he has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, all of the Constitution not just the parts, articles and clauses that he likes.

The whole attitude of Rupiah, supported by George, is a refusal to accept legal advice. This would not be a problem if Rupiah and George were running their own private enterprise – Rupiah and George Limited or Rupiah and George Partners and Associates. But that is not the case. Rupiah is a President of a constitutional Republic. He is under obligation to obey the law. It cannot be denied that Rupiah has problems with following the law and he needs people like George to justify his actions.

We say this because we cannot understand why a president should continue to push a transaction which is clearly wrong from a legal, moral and even business point of view. What interest does Rupiah have in this deal that is blinding him from seeing the legal, moral and business flaws of this RP Capital transaction? Is it because his family, his son Henry has an interest in it? This will not do. Rupiah must learn to deal with public matters with more circumspection than he is doing right now.

What Rupiah and George are doing would make some sense if RP Capital was a reputable company dealing in valuations and other financial advisory services that are relevant to the problems at Zamtel. We have tried very hard to see what qualified RP Capital for the single sourcing that Dora seemed so desperate to achieve. We cannot find any reason.

RP Capital does not have a very appealing image internationally. Their claim to fame seems to be their involvement in questionable mining transactions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that for a very long time has had no proper accountable government and has been characterised by very high levels of corruption and cronyism and clientelism. Some of the people behind RP Capital have got checkered histories and are connected to the dirty diamonds trade. And is this the expertise needed to value the assets and business of Zamtel?

Zamtel is a very important strategic national asset in which millions or billions of public funds have been invested over the years. Any attempt to sell a portion of such an important company needs to be done properly and lawfully. Zambia has enough expertise to advise on how such a thing should be done if it is necessary. To go and bring a company that has no obvious special expertise and try to pass it off as qualified to do such an important job is corruption itself. If, as Rupiah and his friends want us to believe, RP Capital are so well qualified to do the job, why was Henry Banda, Rupiah’s son, going around trying to find experts in Zambia to help RP Capital? The tribunal heard that Henry approached a Zambian company, Pangaea Renaissance, requesting them to assist RP Capital. But another question arises from this, on whose behalf, on whose authority was Henry doing all this and who gave him that authority?

When one looks at RP Capital’s background, it is clear that they are not qualified to do what they are claiming they can do. And their involvement in Zambia is questionable. It is also clear from the tribunal that has just ended that there was a lot of irrational behaviour on the part of some of the key players. Could it be that there was pressure from higher offices? And given Rupiah and his son’s apparent interest in this matter, one wonders if Dora was indeed acting alone and she alone should be made to bear all the consequences of that deal. There is need to ascertain the involvement and interest of Rupiah and his son in this matter and what their roles were. This is more important because of Rupiah’s intransigence and determination to ignore the Attorney General’s advice even after the tribunal has ruled that Dora’s failure to take the Attorney General’s advice was a breach of the Constitution.

Rupiah and George seem to be forgetting that ignoring the Attorney General’s advice, and making the Zambian taxpayer lose US $2 million in the process, is not a breach of the Constitution by Dora alone but by anybody, Rupiah included, who ignores such advice or plays a role in its being ignored.

It is shocking that Rupiah and his government want to ignore everything that the tribunal said regarding the RP Capital transaction and limit themselves to the constitutional issue. It is clear that Dora did not only breach the Constitution. The tribunal found as a matter of fact that Dora breached procurement laws and regulations of this country. The question still remains: why is Rupiah so desperate to see the RP Capital transaction through as if it is his personal deal? Maybe it is, let him tell us! Rupiah wants to behave as though, since Dora has resigned, it is okay to proceed with the RP Capital transaction with all the rottenness that is around it. Was this a do or die deal?

Rupiah is not the only one who has behaved in an unacceptable manner over this issue. Dora herself seemed prepared to go to any length to ensure this transaction went ahead. Dora was prepared to ignore very clear and simple advice from the Attorney General’s chambers. She was even prepared to give Parliament half truths in order to justify her actions. For some reason, Dora did not see the need to tell Parliament who RP Capital were and what qualified them to get the job she was pushing. According to Dora, RP Capital seems to have just dropped from nowhere and made this fantastic offer to help fix Zamtel. Why was there no tender? Dora told Parliament that the RP Capital transaction was within the tender threshold of the Ministry of Communications and Transport. And to this day, she has never shown anybody the tender approval that she got from her ministry’s tender committee to engage RP Capital.

To make matters worse, Dora was being defended by George, the immediate past Attorney General of the Republic. George held two curious press briefings. On one day, he called the press just to tell them that he was going to address them the next day. And of course, on the next day, he addressed yet another press briefing, flanked by Dora. George, as a minister for justice, tried to defend the indefensible. He told the nation that there was nothing wrong that Dora had done and that the Attorney General’s advice had not been ignored. George also told the nation that the procurement laws of the nation had not been breached. This was a deliberate attempt by a Minister of Justice to mislead the public.

What is unfortunate is that this is not the first time that George has done such a thing. Almost four years ago, George caused confusion in Levy Mwanawasa’s government and indeed in the nation when he lied that there was no evidence showing that former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, Kashiwa Bulaya, had done any wrong things, had stolen public funds, for which he should be prosecuted. George, as Attorney General and Minister of Justice, allowed his boss Levy to be embarrassed by the lies that he told him. And also George, in the same vein, caused the Director of Public Prosecution to be embarrassed and have his reputation brought in question. Today George is at it again. He has not learnt anything from that episode, which means that George’s conduct is not a matter of mistake or oversight, it is conscious. These are deliberate acts of a man determined to mislead and defend that which is wrong. But why has George so consistently and so persistently defended wrong things?

We ask this question, bearing in mind George’s campaign to defeat the fight against corruption. George has consistently tried to frustrate the work of the Task Force, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the DPP. Whose interests does he serve? Where does George stand as far as corruption is concerned? It will not surprise us tomorrow to hear that George is at it again defending Frederick Chiluba and his wife, and other corrupt elements that are being prosecuted in, and have been convicted by, our courts of law. Again, this brings out the question of where George stands in the fight between good and evil.

George has no regard for the office of the Attorney General because he abused it and got away with it. He used that office to do wrong things, to defend wrongdoing and to punish or criminalise good deeds. George seems to think that because he is a lawyer, he can disregard the Attorney General without any consequences; or indeed that he can give instructions or talk down to the Attorney General.

Rupiah’s government is determined to ignore the Attorney General on the RP Capital transaction. And today, they are trying very hard to criminalise the good decisions of the Attorney General’s chambers. Let them not say no one told them. We are telling them today: Rupiah and George, you are breaching the Constitution, stop it!

Labels: DORA SILIYA, PRIVATISATION, RP CAPITAL PARTNERS, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 1:56 PM