adminhuge expectations of the men and women they elect to the August House of Parliament in Zimbabwe’s marked democratic tradition.
Just whose interests do our MPs serve?
It is common cause that people “send” their representatives to Parliament with a load of expectations.
It has been stated in some instances that some people even expect their local MP to fly on their behalf!
But then there is always tragedy associated with hope; moreso if hope for the collective aggrandisement of communities is put onto the shoulders of some individuals who find it more pressing to aggrandise the self first.
Recent reports say over half of our MPs – 107 out of 210 – have refused to account for the US$50 000 Constituency Development Fund allocations they received from Government.
The CDF was established by Government last year to allow legislators to spearhead developmental programmes in their areas.
The Fiscus set aside US$8 million for the Fund.
It was the expectation that in June, legislators, among them cabinet ministers, would furnish Government with accounts of how they spent the money.
However, that initial deadline lapsed and unforthcoming legislators now face official sanction.
They have been given until the end of the month to explain how they deployed the funds availed to them.
Unfortunately, reports so far have not named and shamed the offending MPs.
Many voters will be quite interested in that, what with the electoral season coming up pretty soon.
Questions, big questions, now beckon: how and where did the legislators spend the money?
Why should it take long for MPs to account for the money, surely they had budgets whose books should take any elementary learner of accounts to do? (After all it has been revealed that the MPs were taken through workshops on how to account for the funds.)
Can MPs be trusted with Government money, and most importantly for the plebeian majority, can people trust their MPs as presently lining up, and in the future?
What are the rules of engagement?
It is clearly, perfectly and legitimately within people’s rights to demand accountability from their MPs.
This is not only because they vote them into Parliament but also that once there, the parliamentarians purport to represent – and eat – on behalf of the electorate.
A brief background will suffice here.
The current crop of MPs has been noted chiefly for its demands for comforts which they make the nation believe naturally follow their station in life and presumably make easy the supposed onerous task of representing people.
Here are just two examples in the last couple of months, during which time MPs should have been closing books after serving their people with CDF money:
- Last month, it was reported that MPs and Senators had resolved that Government should buy them new cars, arguing that the ones they had been using were damaged during the constitution-making process. This is despite that they were being paid for the vehicles. Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, Mwenezi representative and Joint Parliamentary Welfare Committee secretary-general, said the legislators were “not calling for anything outrageous but they just want something to use in executing their national duties.” He added that “parliamentarians are not amused with their remuneration and Government has failed them.”
l In June it was reported that Senators and MPs were at loggerheads with Finance Minister Tendai Biti after the lawmakers refused to sign loan repayment contracts of vehicles the Finance Ministry availed to them. The MPs and Senators argued that the cars offset outstanding funds they were owed in unpaid sitting allowances. Legislators put it that they should not “subsidise” Parliament with one MP saying: “In this House we are honourable but very poor. There is no pension, no medical aid . . . “
So are the MPs to be heard saying, this time around again, that they have used the CDF money to offset their allowances and to make up for the poor remuneration they get from Government?
Or that they have opened pension and medical aid schemes for themselves?
Surely, “national duty”, as Bhasikiti puts it, begins with serving the self first?
Already tales have been heard which range from one party official who spent the funds on a “small house” to others who have bought lorries to transport fruit in their constituencies, with the money of course lining their own pockets.
There should be something fundamentally wrong with the electorate if they should send to Parliament “poor” people and expect them to bring back development and cash.
And if the rat feasts in the groundnut granary, as a local saying goes, can one blame the rat?
The “poor” people thus demand all trappings of opulence that include medical aid and pension (which, it must be pointed out, do not also obtain back in the villages and ghettoes).
The MPs refuse to “subsidise” the Government but the electorate should find no qualms in subsidising the MPs through the funds that are earmarked for them!
It is clearly an awkward and unfortunate state of affairs.
Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga says “if any member is found to have misused the money allocated to them, they will face legal action and they will not receive the next allocation.”
It would have been interesting to hear, just as much as knowing who they are, what kind of “legal action” these MPs face.
Yet the last bit of Minister Matinenga’s is rather dubious.
So it means, does it not, punishing again the hapless constituency, which would have been deprived by its MP and now have to be denied the fund altogether?
Would there be any other way to channel these funds to the people, away from the thieving hands of the MPs?
This means that the MP is rendered redundant.
Or is it not the solution we are looking for – that they cease to be part of the system; that they cease to be MPs because they cannot be trusted with representing the people?
Criminal proceedings should also be instituted against the MPs for abuse of public funds.
Online Reporter