Mambo decries politicians’ lack of principles, integrity

Mambo decries politicians’ lack of principles, integrity
Written by Ernest Chanda
Friday, July 03, 2009 3:31:54 PM

CHIKONDI Foundation president Bishop John Mambo says it is a pity that most Zambians have accepted politics as a source of income. In an interview in Lusaka on Wednesday, Bishop Mambo said those with integrity were fearing to join politics.

“The biggest problem is that the Church, civil society and all Zambians have accepted that politics is now a major source of income and because politics have been dominated by unprincipled men and women, those with integrity fear to join. Mishanga sellers have taken over politics in Zambia and we are looking at them as if everything is fine,” he said.

Bishop Mambo also called on the current government to stop attacking the integrity of late president Levy Mwanawasa.

He said it was disheartening to hear how some ministers had suddenly thrown away the loyalty they gave to the late president.

“In the last few days, we have all heard how [local government minister Benny] Tetamashimba has been calling on law enforcement agencies to extend their corruption probe to the Mwanwasa rule. In essence he is insinuating that all these corruption revelations we have today should be borne by our late president. And this son of Zambia is not here to defend himself. This is totally unacceptable especially that almost all of those in the current leadership served under Mwanawasa,” Bishop Mambo said. “I fully support the young man Patrick [Mwanawasa] for speaking on behalf of his late father. Had we known that these people were going to witch-hunt into the life of the late president we were not going to allow them to use our money to fly his body all over the country last year? The man did his part and he should be left to rest in peace because there is no one to answer for him. So is this what political opportunism can do?”

Bishop Mambo said Tetamashimba was practicing hypocrisy of the worst kind.

“This is the same person who sang songs of praise for the late president and announced that he [Mwanawasa] was not corrupt. And today Tetamashimba has become a champion in the fight against corruption and wants to blame it all on the man he revered so much. Can we for once stop witch-hunting and channel our resources towards the right things. Yesterday Levy was a hero but today we are witch-hunting into his past, how shameful!” Bishop Mambo said.

He said there was a deliberate ploy to create confusion in the country to benefit those in power.

“These people want to use confusion to plunder even more. Because of these corrupt revelations, there is a lot of anger building up in the nation. People are not happy to see how their resources are being abused and the best way to defuse this anger is to do the right thing,” he said.

And Bishop Mambo has commended President Rupiah Banda for urging the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) delegates to make the constitution within the stipulated period.

He said the work the NCC was doing was far much little compared to what had been done by the Mung’omba Constitutional Review Commission.

“I remember that at his press conference last week, President Banda touched on the issue of the NCC deadline. We support him on that score because our money should not be spent beyond the given deadline.

The President was right in reminding our colleagues at the NCC that they should meet the deadline amid the global credit crunch,” said Bishop Mambo. “In fact these people should speed up the process so that we can quickly start reacting to their report. I’m aware that so far they have covered four committees and they are remaining with four.

As they reconvene, let them know that they will be dealing with the most contentious clauses. I have in mind the 50 plus one threshold and the issue of an elected Vice-President. There are also critical issues from the human rights committee, so they should be more open-minded this time.”