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| Corruption; Where has Zambia Gone Wrong? |
| Analysis The Citizens Democratic Party has been reviewing the scandalous corruption cases which have been made public in the past years. We stress the term made public to emphasize that corruption did not start nor end with Ministry of Health scandal. What the MOH scandal has highlighted is simply the extreme level of corruption prevalent in our country. The consequences of this extreme corruption, has manifested itself in the sad story where we saw a mother lose her new-born child because the University Teaching Hospital staff are striking as a result of low compensation (keeping in mind that the MOH has no money to meet the demands of its staff, yet the MOH has lost billions through corruption). Citizens, the country is doomed to be “comatose” if we fail to arrest this culture of corruption. The Citizens Democratic Party realizes that the fight against of corruption is much bigger than simply making a few arrests.. We are going to have to analyze this issue deeper than its face value as presented in the public media. Please be reminded, that an extremely critical humanitarian ministry under the MMD Administration lost K27 billion! We should not take this lightly at all. PROBLEM “Catch the culprit, but do not change the system which allowed him/her to do it” The CDP does not wish to politicize the issue of corruption. However, we need to recognize first and foremost, that our past and present politicians have been very much in the forefront of allowing corruption to fester. What we have seen is a half-hearted fight against a scourge which is way too strong. There is a glaring truth that our current MMD Administration, and our “current and major opposition (UPND/PF)” who have representation in our parliament has proved that as far as corruption is concerned, they have no strong measure to counter the cancer. In terms of public funds, we should not forget that our parliament (regardless of party affiliation) is tasked to ensure that they legislate and oversee a system that espouses accountability for a capital scarce country such as ours. The MMD and “current opposition” have a responsibility to alter the system each time public funds illicitly “slip through the cracks”. This has certainly not been the case. Instead we have seen corruption cases come and go. Little to no attempt has been made to alter the laws surrounding the checks and balances, in order to prevent corruption from happening in the first place. It is unfortunate, that no one has pointed out that the real problem is actually the system itself. Our government and opposition seems satisfied with a few corruption cases in court to act as a “deterrent” and showing that Zambia does not tolerate corruption. The Citizens Democratic Party asks; really is that the end all be all of fighting corruption? No! As an example, we can also cite the issue of the irregularities of the [most recent] 2007 Auditor General’s report which we have available on our site. Within this report, there lies an unbelievable lack of accountability which the “: current opposition” should have taken the MMD administration to task over. But there has been no corrective measures put in place to stop public funds from being misused. A government system with better separation of powers would have parliament collectively facilitating the investigation of the responsible, or more appropriately, irresponsible parties using the Auditor General's report as reference for the mismanagement of finances. It has taken an independent Member of Parliament, Mr. Charles Milupi, to show concern for the serious mismanagement of public funds to light This clearly validates the fact that the “current major opposition” has no plan for the country, which will deviate from the inadequacies of the MMD government. SOLUTION “It is time to change the system of checks and balances” The CDP manifesto states that the fight against corruption should not be dismissed at face value, but we should look deeper into reasons why it occurs at mass scale in the first place. What is clear is that we should concern ourselves with addressing the root cause of corruption. It is in this vein that the CDP suggests in its 7-Point Agenda and Manifesto, a radical rearrangement of the way business is conducted by government, to promote ethical and transparent behavior, starting with civil servants to ministerial positions. To be more specific the focus should be on why corruption occurs in the first place, not just who is involved in corruption. The MMD government and “current opposition” tend to simply focus on apprehending individuals as a deterrent. The pitfall to this approach is that as long as the laws and systems do not change, corrupt individuals will continue to be accommodated and will in fact only find ways of outsmarting the current system which has already proved to be an epic failure. One of the things the CDP has proposed in its manifesto is to have a proper separation of powers in the three arms of government in order to promote actual checks and balances. The Executive which currently primarily oversees government business has too much power. There are no laws in place which checks the power of the Executive. Thus we have seen in the past, open and yet ridiculous protection of ministers who have clearly erred. CONCLUSION If truly the MMD Administration and “major current opposition” is committed to eradicate corruption it is time for them to do the obvious; that is attack the root cause of corruption. Dressing up the fight against corruption with a few arrests and fancy task-forces will not do. Nor will hollow lip-service pronouncements we have seen from the “major current opposition” simply “condemning corruption in the strongest of terms”. We expect them to shape up and make drastic changes to the structure of the system which allows corruption to perpetuate. Otherwise it will not be illogical for our citizenry to assume that the current politicians also want to illicitly gain from corruption should they remain reluctant in changing the current system. On our part, the CDP will be the party that will remain taking a different approach to governance, as we offer practical solutions that put people first. |
The Citizens Democratic Party
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The CDP Stand on National Issues