Maravi

Rupiah and donors

Rupiah and donors
By The Post
Sat 25 Sep. 2010, 04:00 CAT

When people fail to explain what they have done, they usually resort to truancy, irrationality and stubbornness. A few weeks ago, the nation witnessed something like this with Rupiah Banda. Following increased local and international criticism over his handling of the corruption cases involving his political consultant and advisor Frederick Chiluba, Rupiah turned truant and irrational in defence of what they had done. There was no doubt on the minds of many people, local and international, that the acquittal of Chiluba by magistrate Jones Chinyama was engineered by Rupiah’s government. And this was clearly demonstrated by Rupiah’s appeal to the Zambian people to accept and respect this judgment before Chinyama had even finished reading it. And after that, Rupiah stopped attempts by the prosecutors to appeal Chinyama’s judgment.

And he is on record saying he stopped the appeal. After this, it was very clear to everybody that their goal was to totally clear Chiluba of all corruption charges and ensure that he goes scot-free and keeps his loot. This meant that the efforts to register and enforce the judgment which the Zambian government had obtained in the London High Court also had to be stopped. Therefore, judge Evans Hamaundu’s judgment that stopped the registration of the London High Court judgment did not surprise anyone; it was expected. Again reading judge Hamaundu’s judgment and the hollowness of its basis, there is no doubt that it was secured by Rupiah’s government in the same way they had done with his acquittal by Chinyama. Of course, this leaves a very bad mark on the integrity of our judiciary. But they have done it – they have gotten what they wanted and they don’t care about the rest. They don’t care about even the future of the many whose professional reputations they have destroyed. Chinyama and judge Hamaundu’s professional standing will never be the same again in the eyes of many people.

The effect of all this on the fight against corruption and the standing of the judiciary worried many people in this country, including our co-operating partners – the donors. Some of them could not hide their disappointment given the naked way or brazenness with which Rupiah went about things. Even judge Hamaundu’s judgment was not given an opportunity to be appealed against. This is clearly a corrupt way of dealing with corruption matters. It is also clearly a corrupt abuse of the judiciary and the entire judicial process in our country. There is no way those whose countries, whose taxpayers are making huge financial sacrifices to support our budgets and other projects in our country could be expected to keep quiet when Rupiah is corruptly denying the Zambian people the opportunity to recover more than US $45 million. All sorts of clearly false arguments, some of them rather stupid, were advanced to justify their decision to let Chiluba go scot-free. Again, the donors could not accept this and questioned their commitment to the fight against corruption and good governance.

And because Rupiah could not explain truthfully what he and his friends had done, he resorted to truancy, empty pomposity, arrogance and outright insolence and telling off donors, that they must leave Zambia if they were not happy with what they had done. He claimed that nobody had invited them to come to Zambia, they had come on their own and if they were not happy, they should leave. But this was not a principled position. It was a position taken to escape being called upon to account for the corrupt way in which they had allowed Chiluba to escape justice. This they could not explain; hence their resorting to truancy and irrationality, to behaving like mad people. And because Rupiah’s position was not based on principle but expediency, he today has no difficulties trying to be good to the same people he was a few weeks ago denouncing as bad elements, colonialists, neo-colonialists or imperialists. This is not a recipe for governing well and for good international relations.

One day, the truth about what they did will be laid bare for all to see. There is no way they will escape accountability over this issue even if they were to stay in power forever. Even in death, they will still have to account for what they did in this matter. It is still not difficult to guess what will happen to other matters relating to people connected to Chiluba. There is no doubt they will more or less go the same way Chiluba’s cases have gone. This is corruption. It is clear that state institutions and power are being abused. And abuse of state institutions and power is corruption. And this is what they meant in George Orwell’s Animal Farm when they said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They have power today to do everything they want but this will not last forever. They can even manipulate next year’s elections and keep themselves in power, but still they will not stay in power forever. And no matter how long they stay in power, they will not be able to hide the crimes of their league – one day they will all have to account for what they have done.

Soon they will realise that the exercise of power must be the constant practice of self-limitation and modesty. It was naïve for them to think they can get international assistant without conditionalities and do whatever they wanted to do without being questioned. There is no assistance in this world without conditions, even if that is not expressly stated. Assistance has to be conditional. When you help someone, a position is taken, and that position is taken on the basis of certain analyses of the loyalty and effectiveness of the leadership to use that assistance for the intended purposes. Assistance should be conditional; if not, those giving it run the risk of it being turned into the opposite of what they want.

Surely, this is not the way for decent leaders to behave. Today they say this, tomorrow they say something else. Today they denounce some donors, tomorrow they praise the same donors. What type of madness is this? But this is what happens to a country and its leadership when principles are lost, when values are subordinated to vanity. But today’s politics is about the search for progress in a changing world. We must build the strong and principled leadership that can provide it. A leadership that is inconsistent, that lacks principles cannot lead us in this highly changing world. We cannot buy our way to a better society. We must work for it together. Leaders lead, but in the end the people govern. What we are saying is rooted in a straightforward view of society. In the understanding that the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles, standards, common aims and values.

Labels: DONORS, FREDERICK CHILUBA, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 5:57 PM