Maravi

Political leadership has been turned into business ventures

Political leadership has been turned into business ventures
By George Chellah
Tue 20 July 2010, 04:00 CAT

CITIZENS Forum executive director Simon Kabanda yesterday said political leadership in Zambia has been taken as a business venture. Analysing the current political leadership in the country, Kabanda said people were so much interested in power and wealth.

“One of the biggest challenges we have in the country today is to see leaders who are selfless. We haven’t seen leaders offering themselves for leadership because they are not selfless,” Kabanda said.

“People are offering themselves for leadership because they are interested in power and wealth. They have taken political leadership as a business venture.”

He said the electorate were currently faced with the challenge of identifying who is going to be a genuine and selfless leader.

“The leaders are not so much concerned about addressing the issues that’s why they spend a lot of time focusing on negatives and weaknesses of their political opponents. And because of that we as the electorate are left with no hope of a better Zambia,” he said.

Kabanda said Zambians have not lost hope completely despite the problems in the leadership.

“We know that amongst ourselves as electorate we may find aspiring leaders who may be selfless,” he said.

He said the challenge that Zambians have was to identify the kind of leaders who are going to help the nation.

“This is the challenge we are faced with, for example, the ruling party leadership have concentrated more on corruption than fighting it. They are more corrupt now, that’s their preoccupation,” Kabanda said.

“That’s why they want to revise the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Act to legitimize their corrupt dealings.”

He said Zambians were looking for leaders outside the MMD to rule the country selflessly.

“People who should rule the country must be corruption free. The electorate invested their hopes and emotions in the PF-UPND pact. For the people, these two opposition parties coming together already showed selflessness,” Kabanda said. “But seeing that there are problems in the pact it means that selflessness we saw is now dying. The problems and the challenges in the pact now are taking away that selflessness we saw in their coming together.”

He said Zambians want to see genuine selflessness in the leadership.

“We will know that they are selfless when we see that their preoccupation is not so much about themselves becoming leaders. But that they are concerned about the welfare of the electorate,” Kabanda said.

“The leaders in the pact for instance, should be able to give hope in people that what they are concerned about is not them being in power but to change Zambia for the better.”

He urged the pact leadership to show selflessness and provide hope in Zambians.

“One litmus test for the pact is the one we gave last week where each one of them should be able to humble himself and say to the other ‘I am ready to serve under my friend’,” Kabanda said.

“The second litmus test is where we see it coming from the two political leaders of PF and UPND Mr Michael Sata and Hakainde Hichilema saying that it can even be either of them or anyone of them in the leadership of the pact. Someone else apart from the two leaders, the leadership in the pact should not just be about the two of them.”

Labels: CORRUPTION, LEADERSHIP, SIMON KABANDA

posted by MrK @ 12:27 PM