Maravi

A political family of thieves

A political family of thieves
By The Post
Mon 07 May 2012, 09:20 CAT

When people say that the MMD is a corrupt political party, they do not mean that every member of that party has stolen public funds or that they have abused power. It is a fact that there are many MMD members and leaders who have been prosecuted and convicted for corruption. And there are many other MMD members and leaders who have been shielded from being prosecuted for corruption.

And today a good number of key MMD leaders and members are being investigated for corruption. Soon, a good number of them will be prosecuted for corruption. Some, like Rupiah Banda's son Henry, are on the run, fearing to be arrested and prosecuted for corruption.

All these things have never been condemned by the general membership and leadership of the MMD. This is a political party that is very well known for shielding its supporters, members and leaders from being prosecuted and convicted for corruption. It is a party that has built a very strong reputation for defending corruption and corrupt elements.

This is a political party that shielded and protected Frederick Chiluba from being convicted for corruption. This is the political party that procured the acquittal of Chiluba from the corruption charges he was facing and boasted of doing so.

This is the political party that made sure that Chiluba and his corrupt friends kept their loot and denied the Zambian people the opportunity to recover what was stolen from them. This is the political party whose leadership connived with the Judiciary of our country to deny the Zambian people justice in all the Chiluba corruption cases.

None of the members and leaders of MMD, including Kabinga Pande, ever distanced themselves from the wrongs of their party, from the corrupt decisions of the leadership of their party. This is a political party that has defended everything that is corrupt as long as it is its members or leaders involved.
Kabinga says he himself is not corrupt.

Yes, this may be so, this may be true because even we ourselves do not have anything that we can directly accuse him of having stolen. Kabinga goes on to say that "if you have a family of 20 and in that family there are three thieves, you can't say that family they are all thieves". It depends on how the 17 members of this +family conduct themselves in relation to their three thieving members.

If they are always quiet about the thieving activities of their three members and defend them when they are attacked for stealing or are accused of being thieves, then they pass to be accomplices.

And they can legitimately be called thieves themselves. Worse still if they take a share of the loot or benefit from what their members have stolen in any way, then their family qualifies to be classified as a family of thieves.

In a good family when a member brings something that is beyond his earned income, they are seriously questioned about its source and if no satisfactory answers are given, they are told to take it back. Kabinga and his so-called clean friends in MMD never did this.

They never questioned Rupiah where he was getting the money that they were using for their most expensive and extravagant election campaign that this country has ever known.

Kabinga was a member of the MMD national executive committee and knew very well that the party was broke, had no money but was ready to use or condone the use of a lot of money whose source he did not seem to know and could clearly not have been legitimate.

This is not the behaviour of members and leaders of a clean party, of a decent political family. This type of behaviour belongs to a party that is corrupt, that has been corrupted to the core and is reeking of corruption in every pore.

Continuing to live in a state of denial will not help the MMD much. What Kabinga and those who consider themselves clean in the MMD need to do is to start a serious campaign of cleansing their party of any perception of corruption.

This can only be done by openly and honestly repudiating corrupt members and leaders and their actions. It also needs them joining the rest of their people in fighting the corruption of their own friends and in some cases helping to expose the wrong things that their friends did when they were in power.

This has not been the attitude or spirit of Kabinga and others who want their party to be seen as a clean party. Kabinga has never stood up to disassociate himself from any corrupt activity of his party but he wants his party and himself to be seen as clean people.

If Kabinga is honest about corruption in the MMD, he would be the first one to admit that Chiluba was a corrupt leader of their party. But nowhere did Kabinga ever publicly attempt to disassociate himself from Chiluba and his corruption.

Kabinga is today aspiring to lead the MMD but he is not in any way attempting to show the Zambian people how his leadership of the party will be different from that of Rupiah and Chiluba and what was wrong with these two.

We ask Kabinga to state categorically whether or not he believes that Rupiah and Chiluba were corrupt leaders. We put this challenge to Kabinga because this will truly test his level of honesty and how far he detests corruption and the corrupt. We put this challenge because every honest person in this country knows that Rupiah and Chiluba were corrupt leaders.

And that's why in the end they fondly embraced each other while the likes of Kabinga were cheering them on. Kabinga was part of Levy Mwanawasa's government that sincerely believed that Chiluba was corrupt and parted company with him. But this same Kabinga had no problems embracing Chiluba when he was part of Rupiah's government.

What type of people are these that want to be taken seriously as being clean people, people who are opposed to corruption? Kabinga may not have directly dipped his fingers in public coffers, but he doesn't seem to have difficulties being in the company of thieves and eating with them as long as he himself has not directly stolen.

This can be deduced from his own example of a family of 20 with three thieves. He has no problems living with the three thieves and eating with them as long as it is not him who has directly gone to steal. What type of thinking is this? What type of leader is this?

It is a fact that the majority of our people sincerely believe, and justifiably so, that the MMD is a corrupt political party with members and leaders who tolerate corruption and the corrupt and who are ready to benefit from the loot of its corrupt members and leaders. This is what our people feel, and it must be appreciated as a deeply felt distaste, rather than a momentary irritation.

And there is no malice in this feeling; it is a legitimate and genuine feeling. It won't do for the MMD and people like Kabinga to continue denying this fact.

If the people are truly wrong in their perception of the MMD being a corrupt political party, then Kabinga and his friends have a big job to try and show the Zambian people how clean they themselves and their party are.

The onus is on them to prove by deeds that they are not what the people think they are - a corrupt political party. As long as this perception remains, the MMD will continue to be seen as a corrupt political party, a political family of thieves.

Labels: CORRUPTION, MMD

posted by MrK @ 5:20 PM