“And blasts Chibamba Kanyama as a self-proclaimed economist”
THE RISE AND FALL OF A PRESIDENT
By Sean Tembo – PeP President
1. One thing that is for sure is that successfully running the affairs of a nation is a lot of work. If you are going to be a successful President then you need to do a lot of things right. Among those things however is appointing competent people into decision-making positions, listening to advice without feeling undermined, being sincere when you talk to the people and focusing on the way forward as opposed to dwelling on the past. However, our new President Mr Hakainde Hichilema appears to struggle to tick these boxes so far.
2. On the issue of competence, l have argued in the past and l wish to argue now that one of the reasons why our country has failed to make any significant economic progress 56 years after getting independence is because various successive Presidents have not made it a priority to appoint the best and brightest Zambians to decision-making positions. Instead of advertising vacancies so as to give all Zambians an opportunity to apply, they share these jobs quietly and secretly like roasted groundnuts at an overnight village festival. Successive Presidents would appoint people who are either in their phonebook contacts or those who are whispered to them by their close advisors, friends or family relations. What this means is that those Zambians who do not have any political connections never have a chance to be appointed to a top decision-making position regardless of how competent they might be. The end result is that you end up with a Government that has a sub-optimal pool of skills. Or to put it in simple English, you end up with an incompetent Government. And it does not matter how competent you the individual President is, if the people that you appointed to decision-making positions are incompetent, the quality of decisions that trickles down is poor and consequently the entire Government is set for failure. I was hopeful that President Hakainde Hichilema with his colorful CV would be the President that would change this trend by extending a fair opportunity to each and every Zambian to be employed to decision-making positions. But it appears evident so far that my hope is misplaced. There is no change in this area and consequently Zambians should not expect much difference to the way our economy will be managed going forward compared to the way it has been managed for the past 56 years since independence. All because we have yet again failed to assemble a group of the best and brightest citizens to help in converting our economic potential into actual wealth for the benefit of our people. All because the President has decided to run the nation like a personal farm where jobs are given in order to settle personal favors instead of on merit. Whereby Zambians with no political connections stand no chance of contributing to the countries development, no matter how competent they might be. It is really sad.
3. On the issue of the President being able to take advice without feeling undermined, it is evident that we again have a problem in this area. I have argued in the past and l wish to argue again here that a President should never be filled with self-importance if he is going to succeed. When people advise you, there is need to pay attention to what they are saying than being strong-headed and always believing that they are trying to undermine you and your plans. So far we have strongly advised President Hichilema against the idea of getting an IMF and putting the country on an IMF programme. We have also strongly advised the President against making careless statements about things such as our national debt and the level of corruption to the outside world the way he did during his interview with the BBC. Like l have said before, the reason we give this advice to the President is because we want him to succeed. It is not because we are undermining him. But despite our advice, it appears that the President is very strong-headed and incapable of listening to advice from us lesser beings. He has made it clear that the issue of getting an IMF loan is non-negotiable despite the likely retrogressive IMF conditionalities such as employment freeze, wage freeze, privatization of parastatals such as ZESCO and Zamtel, scrapping of social welfare schemes such as Farmer Input Support Program and Social Cash Transfer and yesterday the former Minister of Finance Hon. Bwalya Ng’andu told the nation that the IMF also wanted Government to increase the prices of fuel as well as electricity tariffs as a conditionality of getting an IMF loan. A certain self-proclaimed “Economist” who once worked for ZNBC was arguing that the conditionalities which l had earlier listed was mere fear-mongering, so with the confirmation from the former Minister of Finance who had directly engaged the IMF, I wonder what this “Economist” would have to say. To say that these impending IMF conditionalities are retrogressive to the nation is an understatement. You see country men and women, the only way to develop our country is to do two things; seal all tax and non-tax revenue leakages and increase domestic production. For us to increase the productivity of our economy, the key production inputs such as electricity and fuel have to be affordable. What the IMF is asking us to do by demanding that we increase the prices of fuel and electricity is to undermine the growth potential of our economy. Already the price of electricity is too high and we are supposed to be talking about reducing it and not increasing it. Most households now only use electricity for lighting and have gone back to charcoal for purposes of cooking and heating water, which is causing serious damage to our environment due to the cutting down of trees. Now can you imagine what the further impact to the environment will be if Bally gets his way and we go on an IMF program and we increase the price of fuel and electricity as per IMF demands? Brothers and sisters, the IMF programme is wrong at so many levels. Let us keep our fingers crossed that President Hichilema will listen to our advice and have a change of heart on this matter. Otherwise we are doomed.
4. On the issue of sincerity, it is evident that President Hakainde Hichilema struggles with telling the truth. I wonder whether this is because of his prolonged stay in the opposition where he had made it his lifestyle to exaggerate the bad and underplay the good just so as to remain relevant. But Mr Hakainde Hichilema should know that he is no longer an opposition leader now. The people of Zambia elected him as Republican President on 12th August. Therefore, the President must learn to act presidential. First he lied to the world that he had inherited empty coffers. And when he was challenged that he inherited about US$3 billion when he was sworn into office on 24th August 2021, he then switched his narrative and said his statement that the country’s coffers are empty was said in the context that we have US$3 billion in reserves but we owe US$12 billion. Well, as a Chartered Accountant of many decades of experience in public practice, l want to tell you sir that that is the most silly explanation ever advanced in the history of finance. You see, you cannot compare what is in reserves to what we owe which is due at various intervals into the future, without taking into consideration the fact that Zambia is a going concern and will keep generating revenue going forward. Already we are told that the Zambia Revenue Authority has exceeded its targeted revenue collection for the year and yet we still have 4 more months to go. What this likely means is that we are going to have a budget surplus this year. Since ZRA had collected about ZMW60 billion as at 31st August 2021, we can estimate the quantum of the surplus as ZMW30 billion. At today’s exchange rate, that is approximately US$2 billion which is enough to pay the Eurobonds that are due in 2022 and 2023. The expectation is that the UPND Government should ensure that the nation records another budget surplus next year and the next year and the next year so that we can build our reserves. So tell us again Bally, why do we need an IMF loan? Please sir stop lying to the world that our economy is in a crisis because it is not. Just work had to make things even better from where you found them. In fact, based on your flip flopping the past few days whereby one minute you something on BBC and the next minute you tweet something else, another minute your Press Aide says something different, the nation and the international community is beginning to have doubts about your competence. Everyone is wondering whether you’re really the finance whiz kid that you had portrayed yourself while in opposition? And also stop sending people to harass us when we expose your untruths and inconsistencies. You are our President now and you swore an oath to protect each and every Zambian including those of us who challenge you. So don’t pay lip service to the issue of our security. Tell your supporters to stay away before we have a major security incident. If they want to challenge us, they should do so with sober counter-arguments and not threats, insults and innuendo. The fact that you are now the President does not mean that Zambia is now no longer our country. This is our country too.
/// END
SET 04.09.2021