Maravi

MMD is a corrupt party

MMD is a corrupt party
By The Post
Thu 22 Mar. 2012, 13:00 CAT

EDGAR Keembe, Southern Province MMD chairperson, says it is an insult for anyone to say the MMD as a party is corrupt because not all members of the MMD are corrupt. Yes, it is true that not all members of the MMD are corrupt. And it is not an insult for anyone to say that the MMD is corrupt because it is corrupt. This is a party that had so much money for its election campaigns last year and today, is not able to raise K3 billion for its extraordinary convention. Where has the money gone? All of a sudden, its sponsors have disappeared! How possible is this that genuine, clean and committed sponsors of MMD can disappear in thin air so quickly?

The truth is the MMD is a corrupt party that thrived on corruption. It is a party that was parasitic on government resources and government business. MMD as a party survived because of its control of government resources and contracts. The so-called financiers of the party were people who were doing business with government.

They were given government contracts on the understanding that they give something back to the party and its key leaders. It will be impossible to find anyone who donated any money to the MMD's campaign who was not doing business with the government.

MMD cannot account for the sources of its campaign funds. And equally, key MMD leaders, including Rupiah Banda himself, will have serious difficulties accounting for the sources of the gigantic wealth they have accumulated over the last three years.

And this is a party whose former leader, Frederick Chiluba, was found to be corrupt by the London High Court and asked to pay back the money he had stolen from the Zambian people. He was only protected from doing so by Rupiah's connivance with our courts of law.

Chiluba was equally acquitted for corruption through Rupiah's intervention. This is also a party whose immediate former national secretary, Katele Kalumba, has been convicted on corruption charges. The current chairman of the MMD, Michael Mabenga, was also found by our courts of law to be corrupt and his parliamentary election in Mulobezi accordingly nullified.

And some of the key leaders of the MMD today are people who are being investigated for corruption by our law enforcement agencies and cannot in any way be said to be clean. It is therefore not an insult to say that the MMD is a corrupt party.

Denial of this fact by Edgar and his colleagues will not help the party recover and bounce back in 2016 as they are hoping to. They cannot dismiss this corruption tag as mere false perception. Much of the MMD's linkage to corruption is justified and it is what most of our people believe to be true.

And it must be appreciated as a deeply-felt distaste for the MMD, rather than momentary irritation. They should not cheat themselves that they are still very popular with the people going by the results of last year's elections. If we were to hold elections this year, the MMD would not be able to win most of the parliamentary seats they won last year and their presidential candidate may equally not perform that well.

Their performance last year was a product of their corrupt abuse of the electoral process and state machinery. It was also a result that was obtained through excessive use of money. They had the money and they used it to try and win votes. They won some by corrupting and intimidating some weak souls. But now they are not in a position to do so.

They don't have the money because the cows they were milking are no longer under their control and they cannot also intimidate anyone because they are not in control of the state machinery. Money was everything to the MMD, its politics and its hold on power. Without that money and the control of that state machinery, the MMD cannot be the same.

The MMD cannot run away from the corruption tag because this is the political party that removed the abuse of office offence from our Anti Corruption Commission Act so that they can steal public resources with impunity.

How can they today cry that it is an insult to call them a corrupt political party? What else can they be with this kind of record? They may be angry with Katele Kalumba's statements on these issues of corruption, but he is telling them the truth. Katele is being honest on this issue.

It is sad that he himself has been convicted of corruption. But this does not blind him from seeing the corruption of his league, of his party. Admitting a problem is said to be the first step in solving it. The MMD has a problem, a very serious one, of a very bad corruption record.

They should face this issue head-on and deal with it. They should start by recognising the scale and impact of this problem on their party's future. They should admit their sins and work to change their image of corruption. And change is an important part of the process of changing their identity and the character of their party. Political parties that do not change die.

If the country is changing and the MMD doesn't change, then they will become of no use to the country. Change is an important part of gaining the nation's trust.

Instead of Edgar and his friends wasting their time and energy trying to deny that their party is not corrupt, it will be better for them to focus on admitting the mistakes and failures of the past and promise the people of Zambia a new approach to politics and public affairs.

The MMD needs to go back to its founding principles and rediscover itself. There is no choice between being principled and unelectable; and electable and principled.

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. The MMD had lost all this. It had become a party of opportunists, vultures, jackals, hyenas and scavengers of all sorts.

Today's politics are about good governance, accountability and incorruptibility. A corrupt MMD, as it stands today, should not harbour any hope of a reversal of fortunes.

Labels: CORRUPTION, MMD

posted by MrK @ 6:19 PM