PF COMPROMISED THE CIVIL SERVICE BY EMPLOYING THEIR CADRES
The Scoop Editorial: June 13, 2022
ZAMBIA today has a fragile, unpatriotic civil service all because of the Patriotic Front (PF) way of doing things. Since independence, at no time in our history did we have a civil service so driven by cadres as seen under the PF misrule.
Tiptoe into the past before PF came on the scene, you will see what it meant to have a professional, unadulterated, and uncompromising civil service. Government and quasi-Government institutions were run by professionals. In the past, there was integrity in the civil service. But it was after PF came into power that we saw a total disaster. The civil service simply degenerated into an animal farm led by a cluster of cadres most of which were not even suited for the positions they held.
So, when we see seemingly intelligent individuals crying foul over the non-renewal of contracts or dismissal of these same elements that held these senior positions on partisan lines, we realise how unread most Zambians are, including some misguided charlatans in the opposition who have no clue where the current problem is stemming from.
Here are facts which some people have ignored and we challenge those who are crying the loudest and accusing the appointing authority of being vindictive, to explain to the people of Zambia what they would have done if they were in power:
The PF appointed everyone on party lines. You could be educated from any university under the sun but under the PF regime, you would never be given any senior position anywhere as long as you are not a bonafide PF member. For you to pass the first litmus test and get a job under the PF, you needed to be a bonafide PF member first regardless of how qualified you were for any position.
For those of you who are making noise blindly in the name of opposition over this matter, have you read the PF constitution in totality? Have you understood it clearly? Have you taken time to analyse the correlation between their constitutional provision on this matter and how appointments to senior positions were done?
Let us break it down for you; Article 3 of the PF constitution under the heading “Public Institutions” clearly states that the party shall ensure that all the public institutions, state-owned enterprises, and popular mass, and similar organizations are led by persons who are members of the party and who are uncompromisingly committed to achievements of the party.
This means that for you to be Zesco Managing Director, first, you must be a PF stooge before they even look at your qualifications; for you to be Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) Commissioner General; you needed to trace your footprints from the PF; If you were to be appointed to any board, at least you or your grandfather should have been PF or else, your qualifications would continue yawning in the baking sun or be used to wrap vitumbuwa at the nearest market.
This is the reason when Michael Sata became president in 2011, he fired nearly everyone in senior or strategic positions serve for those who were staunch PF members. Why? Because the party constitution provides that appointments are a preserve for party cadres.
The dismissal broom swept across the civil service in such a barbaric manner never see before and the same chaps who are ranting about the non-renewal of some people’s contracts in Government today, never said anything then, just because it served them right.
This is the reason we saw District Commissioners (DCs), District Education Board Secretaries (DEBS) Permanent Secretaries (PSs), Directors, board members, etc all over campaigning for the PF during elections because they were PF cadres and stooges and they had to do it for the sake of the party or else they risked being booted out.
This is why PF cadres had no respect for civil servants and would pounce on anyone they felt was not benefiting the party in any way. They could make orders to directors and their instructions would be carried out religiously without question. This is why theft and corruption under the PF especially in their last five years in power became rampant because it was a prescription by the party which was executed by their foot soldiers in Government.
This is why up to now, the PF are still bragging that they are still running Government because they know that the people they left to run the civil service were all cadres and still pledge their allegiance to the party.
For this country to return to days when we had a professional civil service, there is need to get rid of all PF cadres, some of which are not even qualified for the jobs they hold so that qualified and uncompromised people can take over. The civil service is about service delivery and the line between service delivery and economic sabotage is very thin such that if you are not careful, the very people entrusted with public responsibility can mess you up.
We have no problem with the opposition providing checks and balances to those in power but the pettiness with which some of these so-called opposition politicians debate issues is so off the tangent that it is difficult to make sense out of most the things they make noise over.
Given an opportunity to lead this country, these same complainants would probably do it even worse than the way Government is doing it in trying to restore sanity to the civil service. After all, who would entrust responsibility in a well-known cadre supporting the opposition?
Yes, let the rightful people, fit to drive the New Dawn Government’s agenda, be appointed to these positions because Zambians who gave the UPND the chance to lead this country are yearning for development and this agenda cannot be driven by those who were appointed on political patronage by the former ruling party