MPs in it just for the money

only received US$25 per day instead of the US$75 agreed upon for the 90-day exercise.
The latter figure is said to be the benchmark for all parliament business.
On Tuesday, it was exposed that MPs were failing to account for the US$50 000 Constituency Development Funds allocated to each of them by Government.
Shamelessly, some MPs were resorting to showing auditors projects that had been undertaken by donors and non-governmental organisations.
Unfortunately for them, this mischief has been exposed and the errant MPs — most of them anyway — now stare heavy sanctions of up to five years in prison. (It sounds absurd, though; that the relevant bill to operationalise the same punishment is to pass through the same rotten Parliament!)
These two issues highlight what is fundamentally wrong about the current crop of legislators, namely that of showing clearly that the MPs are in it for the money rather than serving the people.
Granted, there is nothing wrong in MPs receiving allowances for their duties.
It must be admitted though that the avarice often displayed by MPs has permeated all levels of politics as the elected officials resort to accumulating wealth, lest they are booted out or the political tide turns.
The country has witnessed some councillors tricking and muscling vulnerable people out of their homes.
Other councillors, who previously did not own a decent pair of shoes or had never worked anywhere — if qualified — have gone on to accumulate immense wealth for themselves.
Back to the MPs, many a time that the legislators have been in the media they have shown to be greedy and self-centred.
There is need to give a rough analysis about the US$8 million MPs are demanding from Copac for the 90 days they were reportedly underpaid during the Constitution outreach.
If you calculate the minimum US$25 per day they were given, it would translate to US$750 a month and a cumulative US$2 250 for the 90-day period.
Now, who earns that kind of money in Zimbabwe, on average, when civil servants get a mean of US$300 and 90 percent of the population is reportedly unemployed?
If the MPs were to get the US$75 per day they would accumulate US$6 750 which translates to US$2 250 per month. It only gets dirtier and more ridiculous.
It means that they would get what a civil servant would earn in seven-and-half months.
Serving the people indeed!
The MPs are even more brazen.
They claim that MPs from other countries are paid about US$300 per sitting, while others receive US$13 000 per month in salaries — something they would not mind getting themselves.
When all is said and done these people were paid, and still want to be paid more for an exercise whose product threw away what the people said.
The outreach programme, as we know, has been voided by negotiations on the Draft Constitution.
The people’s views were thrown away as the drivers of the constitution resorted to negotiating party positions and conducting the exercise in the so-called international best practice.
The current stand-off among the parties in the inclusive Government is a direct result of the disposal of the people’s views with one party, Zanu-PF, stating the current draft does not capture the views while the MDCs are but happy the draft didn’t.
It will be very curious, as indeed it will turn out to be, should Copac accede to MPs’ demands — perhaps as it technically should.
Since the MPs are demanding US$8 million as outstanding allowances, should this be offset by the bulk of US$8 million that the MPs are failing to account for by way of CDF?
That is a poser, is it not?
But there is something very telling about the whole saga.
If there is one thing that MPs from “across the political divide” are ready to agree on, it concerns their “welfare” — and there is even some committee to that end.
For a moment, the political protagonists shelve their ideological and political differences to claim their piece of the cake, a scenario we do not find when matters of national interest are concerned as parties generally mark themselves out.
Thus we hear Zanu-PF’s Simba Mudarikwa telling us that, “MPs are owed left, right and centre”, and that they would raise the issue with the welfare committee and in the August House “because we cannot create a situation where Copac can just do whatever they want.”
Without a sense of irony, Mudarikwa is also quoted as saying: “We will also ask Copac how much they got and how much they spent for accountability purposes.”
In the world of MPs only other people need to be accountable to them, and the MPs have the licence to send auditors on a “wild goose chase”.
Mudarikwa and his group perhaps need to be able to tell the people of Zimbabwe, with a straight face, if they have served the nation “left, right and centre”.
The people have indeed been ill-served left, right and centre!
For those that have been served well, they only have NGOs to thank, not their MPs.