Maravi

Playful Rupiah

Playful Rupiah
By The Post
Sun 17 Oct. 2010, 04:00 CAT

Rupiah Banda is not in government primarily to serve the Zambian people. Rupiah is president for personal aggrandizement. And service to the people is something that is very secondary to his presidency. And this is not the type of president Zambia needs.

If one wants to know what the Rupiah presidency is all about, his actions tell it better. Rupiah thinks by being president of the Republic, he is the boss of all the Zambian people. This is wrong. Rupiah is not the boss of all the Zambian people. He is simply the boss of the team that serves in his government at his pleasure. The Zambian people are his masters, not subordinates. But Rupiah doesn’t seem to see things that way.

If Rupiah saw things that way, he would listen more and do as the people want not as he wants. But today, Rupiah does as he wants and not as the people want. And this explains his lack of humility when it comes to dealing with demands of the Zambian people. If Rupiah cared about the feelings of the Zambian people, he wouldn’t be supporting and defending corruption and corrupt elements in the way he is doing.

If Rupiah had any respect for the Zambian people and regarded them as his masters, he would be more modest and prudent, he would guard against arrogance and rashness, and serve the Zambian people heart and soul. But today, Rupiah is not serving the interests of the Zambian people, he is serving his own interests and those of his friends.

What the Zambian people need is a leader who is ready to serve them wholeheartedly and never for a moment divorce himself from them and who is willing and able to proceed in all cases from their interests and not from his own interests and those of his friends and family.

Rupiah has no devotion to the people. What the Zambian people need is a leader with devotion to others without any thought of self, a leader with boundless sense of responsibility in his work and boundless warm-heartedness towards the people.

All political leaders, whatever their rank, are servants of the people and whatever they do should be to serve the people. This being the case, how can any such leader be reluctant to discard any bad policy, practice or idea? And this explains why Rupiah wants to remove the abuse of office offence from our laws.

This is because he regards public office as something personal, something to be enjoyed and benefitted from. A leader’s duty should be to hold himself responsible to the people. Every word, every act and every policy of his must conform to the people’s interests. And if mistakes occur, they must be corrected – that is what being responsible to the people means.

A leader must have the interests and the suffering of the great majority at heart. Rupiah is ready to sacrifice the interests of the great majority of our people to rescue his friend Frederick Chiluba from going to jail. Rupiah has given away the opportunity for the Zambian people to recover more than US $45 million from Chiluba because of personal interest. This demonstrates a serious lack of respect for the Zambian people.

It is a frightening case of misplaced priorities and loyalties. Obligations to the people must always take precedence over loyalty or commitments to a friend. Many issues have been raised over Rupiah’s travel expenditure. Presidential trips are not cheap and they run into millions of dollars every time the President flies out of the country. Our country doesn’t have enough money to afford such travels given the many pressing issues facing our people.

Even presidents of rich countries don’t travel as much as Rupiah does. We know these travels are a great source of income for him and those around him. And Chiluba explained this very well at one of his press conferences when he said that if low ranking civil servants were making enough money to build houses from travel allowances, what more him who was president? But this shows the mentality of our presidents.

They are not different from a humble civil servant or a personnel manager in a parastatal company seeking every small travel opportunity to earn some allowances. There is very little, if not nothing, that this country is benefitting from Rupiah’s many trips abroad. In most cases, he just goes to play. And he did this on his trip to Swaziland where he went to parade himself half naked before very young girls in the company of his host King Mswati.

That picture is still there of Rupiah without a shirt covering his big stomach and his eyes glaring at the breasts of young Swazi girls. On this trip, Rupiah even invited personal friends who don’t work for the government to go on a jolly ride and enjoy with him. Of what benefit was all that to the Zambian people? What business did those half-naked girls bring to Zambia?

Is Mswati an investor? If he is, what is the source of his money? Swazi taxpayers’ money! This is surely not the best way to spend the Zambian taxpayers’ money. And moreover, the Zambian taxpayers paid Rupiah’s salary and other expenses for the time he was in Swaziland playing. Is this an honest way to earn a salary from the sweat and toil of the Zambian workers?

This is abuse of taxpayers’ money and time. Even the travel that Rupiah undertakes within the country has nothing to do with serving the people but to perpetuate his hold on power. They have throughout been election campaign trips. Rupiah hasn’t been going around the country trying to listen to people and understand what is going on with a view of finding solutions to problems. But again the Zambian taxpayer has to foot the bill of Rupiah’s endless campaign trips.

Clearly, Rupiah has short-changed the Zambian voters. This is not the way to run a country and to provide a service to one’s employers. Rupiah is certainly getting more from the Zambian people than he is giving them. Experience tells us that the right policy and style of work invariably conform with the demands of the masses at a given time and place. And it is this that invariably strengthens the leadership’s ties with the masses.

And the wrong policy and style of work invariably disagree with the demands of the masses at a given time and place and invariably alienate them from the masses. To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual however well-intentioned.

Labels: POVERTY, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 3:53 AM