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Rupiah's govt has taken advantage of Levy's death - CARITAS

Rupiah's govt has taken advantage of Levy's death - CARITAS
By Patson Chilemba
Tue 07 Dec. 2010, 04:01 CAT

RUPIAH Banda’s government has taken advantage of the death of Levy Mwanawasa to perpetrate corruption, says Samuel Mulafulafu. In an interview, Mulafulafu who is Caritas Zambia executive director, said everything the nation had seen under President Banda was a reversal in the fight against corruption.

He said this gave the people little hope on the future because the nation risked losing out on international funding.

Mulafulafu said the recent revelations from the Global Fund found both the government and some civil society organizations liable of abusing funds. He said Zambians were not impressed with President Banda’s fight against corruption.

Mulafulafu said due to lack of political will, the government had shown unwillingness to proceed in prosecuting the former president Frederick Chiluba’s plunder cases. He said the government had even gone ahead to remove the offence of abuse of office from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Act.

“If there is any situation where there has been any resemblance of fighting corruption, it has not been from the willingness of Mr Rupiah Banda. But it has been some actions that have been done to window dress or to try and resolve some relationship with the donors,” Mulafulafu said.

“Not that there is really organic interest from the government itself.”

Mulafulafu said the fight against corruption in the current administration died with president Levy Mwanawasa.

He said the nation had seen the scrapping off of the Task Force, removal of abuse of office and the subsequent efforts to ensure that Chiluba was let to go scot-free on corruption charges.

“All these are completely a series of stories that show that they have literally taken advantage of the death of Dr Mwanawasa to sort of perpetrate corruption. Which means that even when they were supporting him at the time when he was alive, they were not convinced about the need to fight corruption,” said Mulafulafu.

“Immediately he died, clearly there was an opportunity for them to do the things they would have done all the time.”

Labels: CARITAS, CORRUPTION, LEVY MWANAWASA, RUPIAH BANDA, SAMUEL MULAFULAFU

posted by MrK @ 6:12 PM