| We have heard enough of ethics rhetoric | Send to a friend |
| Wednesday, 22 February 2012 11:09 |
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MY TAKE ON THIS This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it It baffles the mind to hear of ‘committed’ public leaders hide their wealth from people they swore to serve. Had there been no room for breaking their oaths in office, we would not have gone into the trouble of establishing the Ethics Secretariat. The institution’s cardinal responsibility is to check on the wealth of leaders so as to spot the dishonest ones. The secretariat chairwoman, Judge (rtd) Salome Kaganda, announced in Dar es Salaam last week that her body was about to embark on a routine inspection of public leaders’ wealth to ascertain if their statements resonate with what they actually own. The announcement has aroused a public debate, which, in one way or another, puts the relevance and mandate of the secretariat in the scale with some strongly concluding that the secretariat was inappropriately structured and empowered. Leaders were throughout the years the secretariat has been in place filling wealth declaration forms and the institution was crosschecking them as required. No single record has so far been publicly shown that any of them had failed to enlist the property he or she owns. But reports on leaders irregularly amassing wealth are older than the secretariat itself. Owing to what we witness, it is hard to grade the information as mere gossip. Our leaders are living like kings and queens in a country in which many people are not assured of their single meals a day. The circulating reports further have it that most of the leaders register their wealth in the name of their close relatives. One wonders as to why the secretariat has all these years failed to work on the hearsay and find measures to overcome the vice! It is an open secret that there is rampant breach of ethics, yet the secretariat has all these years failed to admit in public that our leaders’ morals are wanting. The secretariat has been asking informers to volunteer tip off forgetting that the law forbids civilians to reveal those violating public leaders’ ethics. Afteral, how can civilians cooperate to a secretariat, which shies away from revealing unethical public leaders? We have witnessed the secretariat summon leaders allegedly for cheating in the course of filling the wealth declaration forms, but none of them has been taken to task. Many civilians believe allowing leaders to engage in business greatly contributes to conflict of interests, leading to embezzlement of public funds. Commenting on this debated, President Jakaya Kikwete had promised before he took office for the second term in 2010 that he would ensure a law is immediately enacted to restore public trust in leaders. Amazingly we have so far not heard of any progress on the process of drafting a bill to that effect apart from Judge Kaganda dragging the rhetoric about enacting the law last week. If the government believes through the secretariat that the much awaited law is insignificant, it should stop giving the debate a lip service. Belated enactment of the law is not only fuelling corruption in elections, but is also producing immoral leaders, who embezzle public funds in compensation for bribes they dish out during polls. It is also an open secret that many are not elected leaders due to their merits, but rather because they have sufficient money to buy their way into the posts. Tanzanians are no longer interested in hearing the Ethics Secretariat reiterate President Kikwete’s promise because the law against leaders engaging in business was actually supposed to be enacted yesterday. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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