By Hon. Bowman Lusambo
IMF DEAL SHOULD BE MADE PUBLIC BEFORE IT IS APPROVED
When Hakainde Hichilema as an opposition leader then was asked how he managed to privatize some public assets for a song without state agencies stopping him, his answer was “Ministers were sleeping when we were signing.”
Now we want to tell him that Zambians are not sleeping anymore hence our demand for full disclosure of the contents of the Staff Level Agreement his government has entered into with the IMF.
The Fund has responded to our request for full disclosure by stating that they could only make public the Agreement after the Executive Board has reviewed it.
What hogwash!!
This response from the boys and girls at the IMF falls short of an attempt to conceal what ordinarily ought to be public information.
In many instances, the Fund glorifies itself as having reformed. We know that the Fund previously used to publish what was called Letters of Intent. These were public disclosure documents that Finance Ministers of nations entering into economic programmes with the Fund were made to sign before any loans were approved and these were published on the IMF website. Now the Fund today swims in secrecy on one hand while demanding China makes public its loan agreements with countries such as Zambia on other other hand oil. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.
We engaged the IMF with a genuine pursuit to have a well rounded and transparent conversation about the route that the UPND administration was taking for Zambia.
Now that we have received a feeble response from the boys and girls at the Fund, we want to challenge President Hichilema to be magnanimous and disclose the contents of the SLA. The 59 percent vote he received last August does not give him a mandate to relinquish our economic sovereignty to the boys and girls in Washington.
Moreover, Article 62 (2) (d) of the Constitution grants final authority of loan authorisation to the National Assembly, implying that before any Loan agreement is signed, Parliament ought to have scrutinized it before approving it.
Let President Hichilema do the right thing before the IMF Board sits in May/June to review Zambia’s case and make public whatever his Finance Minister Hon. Situmbeko Musokotwane signed with the IMF on behalf of the Zambian people.
