Mugabe’s Announcement of Declaration of Assets bill: a tactic to Divert attention from failed leadership.
By Dumi Senda, FJCZ Interim Spokesperson.
Zimbabweans should by now be used to the bizarre and inconsistent policy announcements by Mugabe and his beleaguered Zanu pf party.
However, those who are more savvy than Zanu pf spin doctors would give them credit for will also see through the latest announcement by the President that he will be tabling a bill in parliament discussing a new law requiring public officials to declare their assets as a tactic to divert attention from the chronic failures of his government and party.
Only a day after the President caused a media storm for reading the wrong speech in Parliament, the timing of this policy announcement is hardly surprising, and it reveals the disingenuous nature of Zanu pf leadership.
Furthermore, the majority of Zimbabweans who are at the receiving end of the corruption by government officials would find it a hard sell to believe that a mere conjuring up of a policy will have any plausible impact on their lives, given decades of Mugabe and Zanu pf leadership during which corruption multiplied and became institutionalised.
It is therefore rather rich for the biggest beneficiaries of corruption in Zimbabwe to take a moral high ground on an issue which they have fathered and nurtured.
Such pronouncements do not represent a commitment to stop the rot blighting the Zimbabwean economy, but rather mere politicking aimed at securing the power interests of the political classes.
Therefore, Zimbabweans are better advised to demand a new brand of politics based on genuine transparency, accountability and citizen participation, and not mere rhetoric which has become endemic in Zimbabwean politics.
Similarly, Zimbabwean media have a duty to scrutinise such announcements, and not to be seduced by headline grabbing stories, thereby unwittingly perpetuating the violation of democratic rights of Zimbabwean citizens through miss-information.
No comments:
Post a Comment