We are struggling with a few officers we inherited in govt – HH
By Walusungu Lundu
PRESIDENT Hakainde Hichilema has lamented that his administration is struggling with a few officers they inherited in government.
He says “I think we just don’t get along. Not because of the face or the language, but because we don’t share the vision”.
President Hichilema said one cannot say it’s okay for someone to take away what belongs to the people but is not okay for another.
“It is not okay for anyone, Dr Mwambwa. I can’t lecture to you, I am reminding you that you are aware of what is going on in the Auditor General’s office. The very office that should protect public resources, you are aware of what is going on. And Zambians want to call it other names,” President Hichilema said after swearing in constitutional and high court judges as well as ambassadors at State House yesterday. “That is why I answered that question at a press briefing with Vice-President [Kamala] Harris over an indictment [of former president Donald Trump] going on in the US. I decided to answer that question consciously, I said here is an opportunity for me to deliver a message. The law does not understand a name or a face, or ethnic group…you transgress the law, it kicks in. There are no sacred cows in the fight against corruption, past, present and future.”
He complained over how the foreign debt grew from the time PF took over power.
“How is it that that office selects samples? They leave certain transaction for five years, never touch them, because there is a friend who got involved in something. Can that be right? No. Do your sampling properly. How is it that it’s a pattern to leave areas that require to be addressed, to be reversed. Those areas are not audited for three, four, five years…because we are seeing a body shape, we are seeing a relative, we are seeing a friend in that area, no!” he said. “Let us not debate this issue as a nation. From 2011, we inherited, less than $2 billion debt. MMD leaves office, the debt we are dealing with…bigger GDP, bigger economy, smaller debt. From 2011 a debt goes up exponentially, the economy goes down the other way round.”
Meanwhile, President Hichilema said the country is being run in a strange way.
“You don’t have to be trained in economics to know there is something here going on. There is a distortion here. The liability goes up, the asset goes down. The gap grows, the money is gone…we should just work together to stop these things. We are running a country in a very strange way. One President comes, cleans the economy. Economy starts growing, that President leaves, another one comes and does the opposite. Parliament and the justice side, ministry, can we draft laws that will make it difficult for people who come into the office only to destroy our country. Make it difficult, let us institutionalise these things,” he said. “Imagine if this government inherited an economy in 2021 whose debt was $2 billion – $3 billion and the economy was growing at six per cent? Judges need to understand these things…”