Let’s not go into govt to take advantage of lacunas in the laws, says Mulusa
By Thomas Ngala(The mast)
FORMER United Kwacha Alliance (UKA) secretary general Lucky Mulusa says the period under which UPND has been in power has been characterised by lack of prioritisation and patriotism in policy formulation.
In a statement, Mulusa added that this has been coupled with taking advantage of lacunas in the Constitution, subsidiary legislated laws and in accompanying policies and procedures for personal enrichment.
He said there has been lack of respect for legislated planning thus rendering national plans so exercised as mere exercises of compliance.
Mulusa also said there has been failure to respect and uphold true separation of powers among the three arms of government.
“We need to give hope to our future generations. We need to grant them opportunities for a life that does not reflect personal, family, society and national suffering from child to adulthood if at all one makes it to that stage. There was a time in Zambia when we had more jobs than the available local candidates to take them up. There were times when graduates had more than one job offer at graduation but today there are no jobs or opportunities at every exit point of schooling, sometimes for the entire life of an individual. There is a serious problem of unemployment and juvenile delinquency leading to increased crime levels among many other vices,” he noted. “We have an eight billion global market, a one billion African market and close to half a billion regional market which we keep on surrendering carelessly to the rest of the global society without ever taking advantage of when all we need is simply doing things the right way.”
Mulusa said the country’s biggest mistake from government to government has been the overly optimistic view of the state’s carrying capacity.
“… and as a result, we overburden the fiscus due to politically rather than economically motivated developmental initiatives. Some behaviours have been nimbly projecting good character but not influencing systems changes. Brigadier General [Godfrey] Miyanda, for instance, would ensure that he accounted for all the imprest given but then presided over a government team that did the opposite and some such as hon. [George] Mpombo, MHSRIP and Hon. Mandandi found themselves on the wrong side of the law for the same deeds the General promoted and practiced,” he said. “The question is what did he do to help stem the practice? That is the question. Let us not go into government to take advantage of lacunas in the laws but help at the least sustain, protect and defend the system so found. Just do the right thing and the nation will move in the right direction from the 60th birth year. Nature follows being! Good practices from the lessons learnt will drive our country into the positive phase of where we want to be – the Vision 2030.”
Meanwhile, Mulusa said the older generation starting from the founding president Kenneth Kaunda’s era made mistakes which he said the younger generation ought not to repeat.
He said during Dr Kaunda’s time, the country put itself in a position where the donor community dictated state policy.
“This was made possible by mainly internal factors driven by political interference in the management of the state’s participation in the economy thus leaving our parastatals operating very inefficiently and at 40 per cent capacity by 1989. Change was therefore at the instigation of foreign sources,” he argued.
Under the late president Fredrick Chiluba’s 10-year reign, Mulusa said there was reckless privatisation in which a parastatal privatised “yesterday” got stripped and plant and machinery relocated abroad leaving previously dependable jobs taken away “but we went ahead to privatise the next parastatal.”
“The aim of privatisation was to increase efficiencies in the economy, grow our industrial base, create employment, reduce poverty and grow human development. Every single day, we reaped the opposite and never cared to change course. Monitoring and evaluation eluded us. Today we are way below the industrial base we once had achieved,” he said.
During the eight-year era of the late president Levy Mwanawasa’s era, Mulusa said there was state capture of the fight against corruption programme by agents engaged to take the task.
“No accountability of assets or funds confiscated, personalisation of proceeds and simply blatant abuse of a noble cause. Giving away of state assets in unbeneficial development agreements (KCM), and unnecessary tax incentives that got abused by benefiting investors. Result? Fight against corruption costs more than results accomplished,” he said.
Mulusa said the three-year period of late president Rupiah Banda was characterised with state capture of a seemingly well run administration leading to citizens’ frustration finally leading to an unnecessary regime change despite excellent economic performance indicators.
He however claimed that there was clear vision to modernise infrastructure previously done by 1975 meant to make Zambia more competitive in terms of reduction in the cost of production of goods and services through reduced cost of transportation as a percentage component that sat at 60 per cent during the three years late Micheal Sata was president.
He added that there was “clear vision politically instead of economically driven project prioritisation in the Link Zambia 8,000 thus robbing ourselves of the benefits of the project cross-subsidisation from the well thought through programme.”
For the seven years’ former president Edgar Lungu ruled, he said efforts of continuing with Sata’s vision were faced with high tides and relentless efforts for state recapture “thus leading to many officials falling prey to the past evils and consequently leading to regime change which citizens now wish to reverse”.