Katele questions non-auditing of Rupiah's accounts

Katele questions non-auditing of Rupiah's accounts
By Maluba Jere and Chibaula Silwamba
Mon 21 Nov. 2011, 13:59 CAT

KATELE Kalumba has questioned the non-auditing of MMD president Rupiah Banda's accounts and called on the national executive committee to quit for having led the party to electoral defeat.

Reacting to MMD national chairman Michael Mabenga and some junior party officials condemning his stance on party affairs, Kalumba said he could not be answerable for unaudited accounts held by Banda and the latter's predecessor the late Levy Mwanawasa.

"It sounds as an irrationality to say president Banda kept unaudited presidential accounts because I was refusing to sign cheques. It's ridiculous that I was signing cheques from Chiengi district in Luapula Province. I could only do so sign cheques if I knew the legitimacy of the accounts. I only signed the party account which falls under the national secretary," said Kalumba, a former national secretary of the MMD.

"The party accounts under the national secretary were auditable accounts because they were controlled by the treasurer of the party and the treasurer of the party is the person fully accountable for those funds. The presidential accounts held by the late president Mwanawasa were not audited. I don't think that the accounts held by president Banda were audited by anybody."

He said it was insulting that people that did not have correct information about the MMD were allowed to debate serious issues facing the party.

Kalumba urged Mabenga not to trivialise party matters by not addressing concerns raised about the constitutionality of the process of electing the party president.

"The constitution is clear about how you can select a party president. It doesn't say the NEC can deal with that. The only constitutional authority to elect a party president is the party convention. When you lose a battle such as a by-election, it is understandable, you can keep your generals, but when you lose the mother of all battles which is the general election, which is the war; a tripartite election is equivalent to a political war," Kalumba said.

"If you lose that, it's apolitical; it's unthinkable that the leadership that failed to provide guidance, technical, political and otherwise, would still remain in office when we were the party in power. It makes political sense and moral sense for them to step down and allow an organising committee to prepare ground, including carrying out a postmortem."

He said the current NEC of the MMD could not conduct its own postmortem, warning that the NEC members would only be covering up their tracks.

He said there was need for an independent team to do a postmortem of the September 20 tripartite elections that ended the MMD's 20-year rule.

"My call to the membership of the MMD is that they should ask for the formation of an independent commission of the party, which excludes these people who failed the party, to start undertaking a postmortem and to independently begin to look at options of raising funding for the convention and look at modalities for re-organising and rebranding the party," Kalumba said.

Kalumba expressed displeasure that the MMD in 2005 introduced the system where members that had lost elections at the convention were co-opted into the NEC, saying this defeated democracy.

"You may not like the people who have been elected but they are the ones who the party membership has elected. Democracy requires that you give them a chance to govern," Kalumba said.

He said despite the court cases he was facing, he retained his right to speak as a Zambian on any matter that affected the nation and his political party.

"No one will shut me up. I will speak even in my grave because things that are wrong are wrong," Kalumba said.

Kalumba said Mabenga must know that as party chairman, he carried a huge responsibility of providing counsel to the party president.

"Let him answer, as most of the NEC members are claiming when they call me, why they allowed the campaign committee not to be constituted through the normal committee procedure which is appointed by the national secretary and approved by the candidate as a matter of simple consideration. Mr Mabenga must answer to the public; how much did they know about the campaign strategy?" Kalumba said.

"If he knew, why is it that it appears the MMD read the youth vote wrongly, inaccurately? If he knew the campaign strategy, he must then say how the resources were deployed. Could he say they were correctly deployed? Could he answer the accusations that there was over-branding of one candidate, a presidential candidate, at the expense of the rest of the party candidates?"

Mabenga and MMD Lusaka Taskforce chairman Chiwele Maimisa have poured scorn on Kalumba's previous counsel to the party on electing Banda's successor.