Maravi

Chiluba should never be allowed to forget that he is a thief

Chiluba should never be allowed to forget that he is a thief
By The Post
Sun 06 Feb. 2011, 04:00 CAT

A society that does not uphold the highest standards of morality is on a slippery slope to self-destruction.

Civilisation, as we know it, can only be sustained if societies observe basic rules and regulations that make it possible for people to live together. A lawless society can never support effective development. And as we have consistently stated, the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards and common aims and values. And this is rooted in a straightforward view of society.

We all must strive to maintain the morality of our society. This means that there must be shame when wrong things are done either by ourselves or other members of society. A society that loses a sense of shame and shock when immoral activity overruns it is nothing less than an animal farm where rules may not be respected by the dwellers.

Again, as we have stated before, the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. And it would also be wrong to expect a general remedy from them only. Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from all of us.

When something has gone wrong, we should all rise to condemn it. And wrongdoers should not be allowed to go scot-free – they should be punished. This is not hatred for the individual. Even in God’s scheme of things, there is a place for the punishment of wrongdoing. We are told of purgatory and hell. We are told that God sends people to these places. For what? For correction and punishment. Can it be said that God is hateful or unfair in doing so?

There is need for us as a nation to insist on the firm and clear implementation of the laws that we have made for ourselves. Thieves and all sorts of corrupt elements need to be punished in order to protect society. We should be ashamed that we have a government that seems to side with thieves and corrupt elements. A government that fails to stand on the side of the people when grave injustices are committed sees no contradiction in championing the causes of thieves.

This is what the suspension of Frederick Chiluba’s UK lawyer underscores. Another society which did not even suffer the financial loss that we suffered is not prepared to accept wrongdoing in its midst. A lawyer who assisted Chiluba and his tandem of thieves to steal from the Zambian people has been made to face the temerity of his own actions. And this is not the first lawyer connected to Chiluba to be dealt with in this way in the UK. Last year, we reported that another lawyer who facilitated Chiluba’s plunder was barred from practising law in the UK for the rest of his life. This is how seriously the UK fraternity of lawyers takes the issue of integrity and honesty in its midst.

We should be ashamed as a nation that when our courts and our government are falling over themselves to launder and sanitise these thieves, those who facilitated their crimes are facing punishment many thousands of kilometres away. What is wrong with us? How do we hope to develop if we are going to allow people that we entrust the responsibility to run affairs of state on our behalf to steal and get away without punishment? We can see that today, Chiluba even has the boldness to demand assets that he acquired criminally which were forfeited to the state to be returned to him. This is what we have observed in the Tedworth case that we have been reporting on. Chiluba feels so confident that today he can demand these things. If what he was doing in buying those properties was legal, why did he have to go and register a company in Panama, a well-known tax haven where people who have got illicitly acquired wealth like to hide it? And why didn’t he do it directly in his own name? What was shameful about buying property? But this is not the point. The point is today, we have a government that has no shame in encouraging Chiluba to behave in the way that he is behaving. A shameless thief, a person who has been found to have misappropriated millions of dollars of our people’s money, can stand and demand the proceeds of his crimes.

What is even more worrying is our government’s complicity in Chiluba’s crimes. The Zambian government gets a favourable judgment in a matter it had taken to the London High Court requiring Chiluba to pay back over US $45 million to the Zambian people and this government conspires to ensure that even this is not paid back. The government knows that even the house Chiluba lives in today is a proceed of his crimes against the people. And yet they are not prepared to recover that property.

Whilst all this is happening in our country, our friends in the United Kingdom are saying no to this kind of impunity. They are punishing their own people for the crimes they assisted to be committed against our people. What more can one ask for in terms of international solidarity? What more can one expect from fellow human beings than to feel our pain in their own chests and deal with those who abuse us?

We should be ashamed that we have a government that is prepared to protect a thief and refuse to recover what he has stolen. This is the same government that feels no shame to go and line up at DFID asking the British people to give us aid. How much more shameless can we be as a people? We allow people that we employ to run our affairs to steal from us. Having stolen from us, we also allow them to keep their loot and then go to the international community to beg for aid. Worse still, we allow this situation and then wake up and go to international financiers to borrow money which our children and their children’s children will have to pay back. Our country’s debt, we are told, is now approaching US $4 billion. And it’s not very long ago that we were battling to service a debt of US $7 billion that was created over 27 years. In less than three years, we are talking of a debt burden of close to US $4 billion when we just recently had a complete debt write-off. And this is not a debt write-off that was given to us too easily. Many people in our country and abroad had to spend sleepless nights lobbying and literally begging those that we owed money to forgive our debt. Today, we have a government that sees no contradiction in protecting corruption whilst increasing the country’s debt burden. This is a government that feels no pity for the vast majority of our people who are living in frightening poverty. It is these people that are paying the highest portion of the tax that corruption is on a people. They expect us to continue to underwrite their corruption. We should pay for their greed and vanity.
It is said that people get a government that they deserve. We say this because it is us, the ordinary people, who should feel the revulsion of these contradictions that are being foisted on us. It is us who can say no to this nonsense. Is this the government we deserve?

Until we begin to demand accountability from our leaders in ways that make it clear to them that we expect no less, they will continue to overlook the interests of the majority. We will be looking at other nations longingly and wishing that the accountability that they get from their leaders could be brought to our country. But this won’t happen on its own; we have to fight for what is ours. We have to demand it. And it is our duty to create such accountability among our leaders in our country. If we don’t do it, no one else will do it for us. Not even the most strict donor conditionalities on aid will stop them from being corrupt and getting away with impunity.

Our friends in the United Kingdom have shown us that they will not excuse abuse of their system to assist thieves. We need to demand such a standard, if not higher, for ourselves. Chiluba went about accusing the UK government of being imperialistic because of the case against him in that country. But today we can see that long after his friends here buried our people’s demands for justice against him, the people of the United Kingdom, especially those in the legal profession, are still extracting some justice for our people. We should never grow tired of demanding justice and fighting evil. Chiluba should never be allowed to forget that he is a thief.
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Labels: CORRUPTION, COURTS, FREDERICK CHILUBA

posted by MrK @ 7:29 PM