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Getting new `leadership code` friendlier to business
2008-03-01 09:10:27
By Abdul-Aziz Bilal
One policy initiative that is being anxiously awaited in the wake of new initiatives by President Jakaya Kikwete is how the wish to strengthen the 1995 law on leadership ethics is put into effect.
The dominant idea is that the Arusha Declaration format of the Leadership Code would be restored, but short of its prohibition of public officials undertaking even poultry projects. That would extend to butcheries, saloons, kiosks.
Yet there is a school of thought who sees all these initiatives as part of `commerce` and should not be conducted by leaders, as it leads to the sort of pressures that have brought about the new initiative.
If one has butchery it is possible he might be working day and night to supply meat to a government school or hospital nearby, or stationery, seeking school supplies.
In a related manner, a Leadership Code is seen as the key issue in curbing mushrooming bars, guesthouses, sidewalk kiosks and the like.
It doesn`t require much effort to see that new initiatives for restituting the Leadership Code, read in an extensive manner as its enthusiastic supporters would have it, more avidly combats the informal sector.
What this school of thought does not realise is that this orientation worsens the situation arising from crushing informal sector activities based on using sidewalk space.
Nor does this school realise that this change in the urban space use policy, or energetic execution of municipal rules, is at the core of recent tensions, anger over contracts, not just the contracts.
Once much of what constitutes informal sector economy was put to shreds, the hope of adaptation diminished, but since there is overall agreement or consensus about `legality` of the use of space, the matter shifted from being an occupational right issue to an electoral promise issue.
Yet in its current format it is hard to see how the issue is resolved as the government can only show its ability to build schools, dispensaries or roads, not in controlling prices of goods.
Even when prices rise in a rather modest ways at single digit levels, conditions of life remain hard, nor has there been much discussion within this school of thought as to how jobs can be created for entrants into the job market, and policy has largely stagnated, or floundered, after the third phase government, At that time there was a tolerant attitude on informal sector constructions, save periodic fighting of congested hawking in the streets - especially at the Kariakoo central market.
Otherwise most of these constructions were being uplifted through the business registration program and in that case being the focus of loans from Pride, Finca, Saccos, Akiba and so on.
These days all what is heard is the `JK billions` which many considered would be based on some earlier initiatives that were little more than an effort to influence voting opinion, in electoral contests after annulment of results.
Such loans weren’t being paid, while the `JK billions` were placed in banks, and thus effectively out of reach.
Yet this issue would not be significant if informal sector activity was free, and petty loan sources as available as it was the case before, creating many little jobs.
Two scenarios open up in relation to how the new initiatives meant to put limits on commercial activity by public servants affects job creation.
One, the more optimistic version that one would expect is what President Kikwete has in mind, is a limitation to seeking public office for the sort of leaders that took high level offices following the 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections.
It means limiting the idea to big businessmen.
Were it that the radical version has its way, a more intense crisis in the prospects of job creation would open up.
It would effectively mean that more than 300,000 civil servants or at least 100,000 among them who have little savings and access to loans are hindered - in like manner as in the Ujamaa period - from putting up projects.
That would cut out most sources of informal sector jobs, and various sorts of goods and services.
Yet however it is useful to privilege the more optimistic picture about what sort of `Leadership Code` is being envisaged, namely in the need to place some limits to big businessmen from public service.
Strictly, this means that the president, now and in the future, wouldn`t be picking top businessmen into ministerial offices, but without interfering in how they seek leadership at a representative level.
Nor does it appear that it is worthwhile to treat local government tendering to councilors as faulty.
This is an area where a trap has been laid for the new Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda, since electoral alliances are based on the need to cultivate support from among business groups.
Removing their eligibility for tenders means also eliminating competitive politics in the preliminary levels and at the parliamentary level; supplying government departments is a lifeline to businesses, and an aspect of equity.
There is no reasonable cause for any trader being barred from all such eligibility. Such discrimination foments group tensions, that Asians are favoured.
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