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When eastern zone councillors call a halt to ’calumny’
2006-05-31 07:45:18
By Ani Jozeni
Something non-habitual has lately been heard in this conformist, ’new zeal’ atmosphere, when ward councilors from the eastern zone demanded that an end be placed to the usual talk, fashionable these days, that local governments are run on the basis of thefts, embezzlement.
While it is perhaps correct from an expert’s point of view, for instance on the basis of reports of the Controller and Auditor General each year, it is a different matter when the government adopts that language.
It becomes a ’step mother’ sort of situation, with central government shy of its own looting, and berating local levels.
How far either of the two situations or moments of intervention is warranted is one thing, and to sort out the contention is another matter. For instance it is true that reports show that use of funds at the local government level leaves a lot to be desired, but the question is who is best placed to discuss that point.
Is it right for the central government to refuse to protect the dignity of local governments on the basis of the fact that there are official reports which talk of extensive embezzlement?
Is collective responsibility inapplicable?
Perhaps this is the root cause of the hiatus at the communication level, which it is possible to berate at local governments specifically in like manner as President Jakaya Kikwete said the lands ministry was betraying its profession.
He questioned how one and the same official could seriously put his signature on two plot title claimants, without any qualms that he was making himself an imbecile in so doing.
This kind of criticism can easily compare with what is being said about local governments, except that the latter is more systematic, enveloping almost all such units, unlike the more specialized ministry.
In actual fact, there is a specific hiatus about the status of local governments in the way the term is used, either as politics or as ’linguistics.’
For at once there is a sphere of the work of government as a whole which is known as local government, referring for that matter to work that is conducted at the level of district councils, while there is another sphere that is a bridge between the two.
Regional administration is neither local nor for is it central government, and instead it constitutes a debatable link between the two zones.
Yet in ministerial terms it is grouped together with local governments, not because it forms a direction extension of it, but as it is supposed to supervise the latter.
Upon his taking up of office, Prime Minister Edward Lowassa made a point of insistence on the matter, that regional commissioners do more of supervision of the work of the district councils, which it is hard to say can easily be implemented.
For in the final analysis this task is given to the District Commissioner, with the RC as a distant supervisor of DCs.
In other words the premier deliberately or otherwise avoided directing DCs to closely supervise the work of elected councils, and limited his reference to RCs, by which it means they should either help, or take up issues with, the DCs concerning performance of district councils.
But it remains unclear who is to bell the cat when the councils do not perform according to standards, for they are indeed expected to be custodians of those standards that someone is being instructed to ensure that they keep.
Outside this idea that councillors keep standards or are best suited to keep them, their raison d’etre fails.
And that is precisely what is at issue, for the councilors believe that they are doing things in a perfectly normal way, the same manner as central government, the police, ministry of health, lands, immigration and name them.
There is consequently no reason for them to be singled out for criticism each passing day, especially if one is talking about suspected misdemeanours of one or two individuals, raised in an audit query – and perhaps already resolved.
Why isn’t anyone berating the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because of the deals suspected to have been carried out by our embassy in Rome, which even JK admitted?
While this intervention from eastern zone councillors might not be enough to stop the central government from loose talk about local government being prone to theft and embezzlement of funds, it is a tongue teaser for the central government.
Is it using those same standards it uses for ministries – where individuals go wrong, or act wrongly, not whole departments or central government itself?
Who indeed squanders more money, between central government and local governments, or perhaps the latter has too little money so that its own little squandering appears grotesque; ruins all service provision?
There is also a problem of standards of ’theft’ or ’embezzlements’ when one thinks of the fact that ward councillors are paid something like 30,000/- allowances monthly, while MPs chalk up something like 1.2m/- before other bills are considered.
While there may have been some rectifications in the past year or so, this picture of incomes roughly gives an idea of what ’proper earning’ means, and in that context, the possible intensity of any theft or embezzlement.
When an MP receives allowances for all days of his tenure in the legislature irrespective of the length or frequency of his attending of parliamentary work, or open sessions in particular, how much of such pay constitutes ’embezzlement’ itself?
In other words, as British jurist Lord Dicey once said, ’the law is an ass,’ that on top of grotesque imbalances of earnings and accountability for services, those who earn 1.2m/- at the very least lay clear standards of probity.
They seek the highest standards of either the use of cash or disposition of services, e.g. tenders, for those earning 30,000/- and have no fuel allowance to speak of. They see deviation from this pattern of earnings, if and when it is inserted into council expenditure by some trick or ingenuity, as a scandal.
Thus two problems exist on that score, first that central government through the Report of the Controller and Auditor General may have a sort of right to query what taking place in district councils is.
But looking at it from a different point of view they have little or no moral right to do that, as efforts to improve earnings of councillors are built up with their very electoral effort.
This is relevant not just for their councillors’ places but also the MP, and for that matter the president and they rightfully expect to share in the polls cake.
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