Zambia’s own parliamentary watchdog

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 11:19:16 +0000

IT all got too much for Action for Governance Forum executive director Justin Mushoke to declare that electorates have been asked not to entertain absentee Members of Parliament as they were a hindrance to development in their respective constituencies, soon after the last national elections.

As observed, most opposition MPs were not doing enough to ensure that there was development in the areas they represent, and that his organization had taken a responsibility to ensure truant MPs were followed in their respective constituencies.

He lamented that he was shocked to learn that the country’s rural areas had continued to lag behind in development when there were lawmakers who had vowed to speak on behalf of the people.

“Our organiSation has embarked on a programme to follow the activities of members of parliament in their respective constituencies and we want to encourage the people not to vote for MPs who were only seen during campaigns,” he said.

As fate would have it, parliamentary activity is now televised on Parliament TV and covered live on Parliament radio. The private and public radio stations and newspapers are equally doing a fantastic job of covering it. Consequently, ordinary Zambians have in recent times more idea and knowledge of what was going on in their own parliament. Things came to a head, when 48 UPND MPs were suspended by the Speaker of the National Assembly for 30 days without pay and any other fringe benefits for boycotting President Edgar Lungu’s address to Parliament.

“They were getting all this money – but we had no idea what they were doing to earn that amount of money,” said many enthusiasts of Zambia’s burgeoning social media scene following some unconfirmed and unofficial remuneration fake news and revelations.

Besides the face-to-face programme the organization has embarked on, I strongly appeal to the Action for Governance Forum executive director, to follow Kenya’s example by launching a groundbreaking website similar to the one in Kenya called Mzalendo – the Kiswahili word for patriot – its sub-title is “Eye On Kenyan Parliament”.

Initially, Mzalendo set out to do nothing less than keep track of every bill, every speech and every MP that passed through Kenya’s 1950s-style parliament house. No mean feat for two original volunteers with full-time jobs, websites of their own to maintain and little to no start-up capital.

The two original volunteers used the same free software that powered their blogs to power Mzalendo – the publishing system WordPress. Everything else, from the database down, was also free and open-source, all bolted together through their own technical skills. It was only when they started trying to find information to put on the site that they discovered just how difficult it was to keep an eye on the Kenyan parliament.

“If you are in the public gallery without a press pass, you’re not allowed to carry writing materials,” they said. “They search you, and take them off you. So if we want to report on a day in parliament, we had to do it from memory.”

 Their priority was to get hold of as much parliamentary information as possible – MPs’ names and constituencies, standing orders, bills, debate transcripts – and laboriously enter it all into their database. Volunteer bloggers and freelance journalists started adding eyewitness accounts of debates. Then they set up a commenting system, allowing anyone to have their say about MPs, their record and any particularly hot topics of the day.

Surprisingly, most of the people who logged on to Mzalendo came from rural areas. People were less likely to vote for someone just because they were in the same tribe in those days. They wanted to know about their MP’s record. People began asking, “What’s my MP doing about this? Where’s the money used for the Constituency Development Fund (CDF)?” And slowly, the MPs themselves started joining in, emailing in to correct their profiles, answering constituents’ questions and joining in the online debate.

Lastly, if you were a concerned citizen who wanted to change something, Mzalendo pioneers in Kenya proved that there were lots of tools out there – the internet, the free software – to give one the power to do that.

Back home in Zambia, normal as it may appear to UPND MPs, who do not find it strange that Saturnia Regna Pension Trust – a company known to be partly owned by their leader Hakainde Hichilema – whose pension funds of approximately K400 million were allegedly transferred to Luxembourg and other European investment havens instead of signing an agreement with the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) to finance the road works urgently needed to rehabilitate the Turnpike turnoff to Mazabuka road in the UPND stronghold’s backyard, obviously growing disenchantment is held against them by the concerned and affected voting public.

In any case, NRFA would have to repay the amount needed for the rehabilitation project through the resources that would be collected from toll fees on the respective road.

Honestly, how can Saturnia Regna Pension Trust a partly-owned Zambian outfit opt to transfer this huge amount of approximately K400 million to European offshore accounts instead of using the same funds in partnership with NRFA to finance the repair of the road between Turnpike turnoff and Mazabuka town? Why not emulate what NAPSA did for the Chingola to Solwezi road? Moreover, two of its major shareholders hail from Southern Province where the portion of the awful highway is situated.

Meanwhile, UPND MPs are wholly fixated with CDF and ‘points of order’ during debates in Parliament and continue to unfairly and irrationally shift the blame to the PF government institutions for negligence of the deplorable state of the Turnpike turnoff-Mazabuka road.

One wonders why they do not solicit for assistance from aid agencies in church mother bodies and at foreign missions accredited to Zambia for development projects to supplement the CDF allocation in their respective constituencies.

Most cynics and skeptics are not holding their breath. Owners of Saturnia Regna Pension Trust through their holding company, Menel Management Services do not see the rehabilitation of the Turnpike turnoff to Mazabuka road, as a viable alternative business opportunity to the offshore accounts in the European investment havens. Besides, they have shown self-inflicted traits of being unpatriotic, selfish and greedy UPND billionaire businessmen.

If the Action for Governance Forum executive director does not chide the UPND MPs’ inappropriate and biased actions over this Turnpike turnoff-Mazabuka road – the hot topic of the moment – the UPND MPs would most likely plunge our beloved Parliament into a mere CDF and ‘points of order’ talk shop which would be far worse than the March 2017 presidential address boycott, the continued lack of  socio-economic development in their respective constituencies and the subsequent ‘walk of shame’ from Parliament the same truant UPND MPs undertook a few weeks later.

My ultimate hope is that Action for Governance Forum would encourage other people to express their frustration against absentee MPs. Not necessarily through the Action for Governance Forum’s suggested website. But maybe Kenya’s Mzalendo website would inspire them to do other things as well – being Zambia’s own parliamentary watchdog. But hey, these are just the reflections of an ordinary Zambian observer.