By Mubanga Mubanga
Corruption is well and alive under President Hakainde Hichilema, says Human Rights activist Laura Miti.
Miti, who is also Human Rights Commission (HRC) commissioner and Alliance for Community Action executive director Laura Miti, has supported University of Zambia (UNZA) lecturer and Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) board member Dr O’Brien Kaaba that there is a lot of corruption taking place in the country, as the recent Financial Intelligence Center (FIC) Report showed.
Miti said she chose to read Dr Kaaba’s statement on video because it needed to be heard by citizens and especially to be heard by the President.
She said Dr Kaaba, who is also a board member of her organisation talked about corruption in his article and everyone agreed that the biggest problem this country faced was management of public resources.
“One of public money that is meant for the people, meant to lift the standard of living, for medicine, for education, for everything, ending up in a few pockets. And it goes out in such shocking amounts, as anyone who has seen the recent Financial Intelligence Center report will know,” Miti said. “What that report shows is that corruption is alive and well under this government and this government must do something about it,” Miti said.”
Dr Kaaba in an article which she read on video stated that the strong anti-corruption fight President Hichilema launched when he ascended to Presidency has ebbed off and lost traction.
He stated that the institutions charged with fighting corruption were simply massaging, bandaging and covering up corruption.
“Isn’t it strange that ACC can make headline news for arresting and prosecuting a poor clinical officer for signing off two employment contracts while the ACC has done nothing about the more cases involving millions of dollars exposed in FIC reports?” Dr Kaaba said.
“Why should the poor be prosecuted aggressively while the rich and powerful are let off the hook and given immunity “rewarded”. Just what has gone wrong?”
Dr Kaaba stated that there were three areas of vulnerability, which the President needed to urgently attend to if the fight has to be resuscitated, look credible and gain traction.”
He noted that State Chambers were in the forefront of looting and facilitating corruption, and that this had put all law enforcement agencies in an awkward situation as state chambers ought to be an ally in fighting corruption.
“No serious crusade against corruption can yield fruits when the heart of the legal machinery for government is contaminated. The level of corruption is sickening, to the extent that state chambers are the ones looking for litigants to sue the government and pre-agree to settle or enter consent orders involving huge sums of money,” Dr Kaaba stated. “The scheme has been perfected to the extent that some orders are now signed using judges outside Lusaka to avoid public scrutiny and media attention in Lusaka. The president needs to do two things: a) dismiss his senior legal advisors and b) either set up a commission of inquiry or authorize a special audit into all the high value payments authorized by state chambers in the last three years.”
He charged that ACC was captured, and that it was a mistake to expect them to be an effective tool for fighting corruption in their current form.
“The forces that are ripping off the state resources through state chambers also have their stranglehold on ACC. It is no wonder the media has been reporting that the ACC management has simply cut off the board from decision making at the ACC,” Dr Kaaba stated. “If the media reports are true, the ACC is not accountable to its board but to the same corrupt elements looting public resources. This suggests the capture is so complete and corruption reigns with impunity.”
He stated that to demonstrate how bad the situation was, a few days ago, he wrote an pinion in his individual academic capacity indicating why he thought the fight against corruption was crumbling, saying he never made any personal attack on anyone and focused his attention on institutional weaknesses.
“The morning after the article was published, the ACC Director General Tom Shamakamba called me through the phone of his deputy threatening to sort me out for commenting on the underperformance of the ACC in the fight against corruption,” Kaaba stated. “This shows the impunity and arrogance that has come to characterize the ACC management. It is not different in any way from the daily threats many of us faced under PF. During the Bill 10 debate, I wrote a few articles criticizing the Bill and appeared as an expert witness in the Constitutional Court during the Bill 10 case. PF officials reacted by threatening to burn me in my house at night.
“Why should Tom be allowed to behave like the lawless PF carders and threaten me for making independent and scholarly criticism of the underperformance of the ACC? What kind of impunity is that? Is it not our duty as citizens to hold those who hold public office accountable? Must we let elections degenerate into a game of trading one set of thieves for another while we remain silent?” Kaaba asked. “What should the president do to revive ACC? He must get rid of the current management of the ACC and bring on board people with a track record of fighting corruption and standing on the side of good governance. The president must appoint someone beyond reproach, and has a history of dedication to the cause and not someone who simply wants to get a salary and accumulate travel allowances while neglecting her/his core duties.”
He argued that the UPND government went to town denouncing the former DPP under President Lungu’s tenure when it discovered that she had entered into settlements immunising some of the individuals accused of serious acts of corruption, saying this partly explained why the government instituted her removal.
“Yet in less that three years, the ACC has entered in more scandalous settlements with some of the people accused of the most heinous acts of corruption. The media has been reporting a shocking trend where the ACC simply asks suspects to return just a fraction of the loot and keep the rest while the suspect is given immunity from prosecution,” said Kaaba.
