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Editorial
Monday, May
3, 2004
Don't Shoot the Messenger
Nine years ago, when President
Benjamin Mkapa was elected to his first term at Tanzania's helm, one of
the first things he did on entering State House was to appoint an anti-corruption
commission under the chairmanship of internationally respected lawyer and
former prime minister Justice Joseph Warioba. His report a year later promised
to sound the death knell of both petty and grand corruption in Tanzania
if implemented.
Unfortunately, internal and
external forces seem to have conspired against this grand project. Today,
as public protests against a perceived increase in corrupt activities in
high places grow louder, President Mkapa’s voice on the issue grows ever
fainter.
Not only has Mkapa – who
once declared, quoting Julius Caesar in a widely published interview with
Zimbabwean writer and close friend David Martin, that even allegations
of corruption against any of his assistants would be enough for him to
fire them – failed to effect the widely-praised recommendations of the
Warioba Commission. He has failed to take decisive action against those
allegedly involved in corrupt practices, and has taken to haranguing opposition
politicians and independent media who make a hullaballoo about corruption.
He is now talking of investigating the financing of media houses and opposition
politicians and so on.
While it is not inconceivable
that some media owners may be susceptible to bribe taking or receiving
funding from elements with partisan political or business agendas, it is
hardly realistic to mention them in the same breath, so to speak, as top
government officials who handle – and skim off – huge import, construction,
mining, and building projects. The point is that whereas media houses are
trading concerns run by market forces, political administration is a duty
dependent only on integrity.
Moreover, it is bemusing
that the president should get into such a lather about small-time media
houses when politically-connected people are buying privatised state properties
at ridiculously low prices, right, left and centre.
Instead of asking media houses,
political parties and civil society to provide evidence of corruption in
high places, we would respectfully suggest that the president just look
around him... He has all the machinery he needs for digging up the evidence.
If evidence is the job of the press, then why do we need such tax guzzlers
as the Prevention of Corruption Bureau, the CID and the courts?
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