Opinion: Why Maureen Mwanawasa Isn’t Qualified For Mayor
YOUR only claim to public office experience is when you ran a Non-Governmental Organisation called the Maureen Mwanawasa Community Initiative (MMCI) when your husband served as President.
Agreed, for some time, First Ladies have always held a visible yet undefined role in public life.
Carl Sferrazza Antony, author of First Ladies: The Saga of the President’s Wives and Their Power, a two-volume set that exams every USA first lady from 1789 to 1990, says the role of the US president’s spouse has evolved from fashion trendsetter and hostess of the White House dinners to a more substantive position.
Indeed, in the Zambian case, the role of the First Lady was taken to a whole new level after Mama Betty Kaunda left State House.
What is the legacy of Betty Kaunda one may want to ask anyway?
For many, it is her role in the Mufulira mine disaster of 1967 when she helped with the fundraising efforts in order to help the miner’s widows.
On the whole, she largely took a back seat knowing that the politician in State House was not her, but Kenneth Kaunda.
Things however changed with Vera Chiluba coming in as First Lady.
She took on a more prominent public role through her organization called Hope Foundation.Most critics of Hope Foundation believed that the organization was nothing more than a political organization meant to help further the political interests of not only her husband, Frederick Chiluba, but also that of herself. Those that believed she was using the Hope Foundation to advance her political interests were perhaps proved right when she successfully ran for political office after her separation from her husband and was subsequently appointed a junior minister in Levy Mwanawasa’s government.
But before that, immediately she left State House, the Hope Foundation completely disappeared from the public radar.
Unable to learn any lessons from her predecessor, Mrs Mwanawasa, having become the new First Lady, formed the MMCI, and went round the country doing what was thought to be charity work.
Critics again pointed to the fact that the organization was nothing but another political instrument meant to advance the political interests of herself and her husband. It was therefore not strange to these critics when after the death of her husband, she entered the political debate when it came to discussing who the preferred successor of her husband was.
You could tell her political motives, or ambitions.
Worse, during the funeral of her husband, she wanted to bar then main opposition leader Michael Sata from accompanying the body which she decided should be taken round the country.
A very strange thing in itself!
For her, it was all politics.
Indeed it was all politics.
After the death of Mr Sata in October 2014, Mrs Mwanawasa was out on the campaign trail, campaigning for United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema for the presidency.
Indeed, it has been all politics for her.
However, it was in January last year when the Lusaka High Court ordered Mrs Mwanawasa and five others to pay back over K1.2 million they received through the Zambia National AIDs Network (ZNAN) for HIV/AIDS-related activities which they have failed to account for.
ZNAN had sued Mrs Mwanawasa and five others for failure to account for a K1.25 million grant given to the MMCI.
Other than Mrs Mwanawasa, the others are Noreen Mapala, Wright Mumeka, Sam Mundia, Simon Sakala and Rosaria Fundanga, who are all trustees for the MMCI, which was founded in 2002, months after Mr Mwanawasa took over as President.
In its statement filed in the High Court, ZNAN stated that the six trustees had declined to refund the money despite having been served with several reminders as well as a letter of summons from the High Court.
ZNAN was a principal recipient of the grants administered on behalf of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. It received about US$36.1 million and the MMCI applied to access part of the funds to use on people living with HIV and AIDS and to facilitate the development of life skills in young people to reduce their vulnerability to infection with HIV.
Other programmes the funds were applied for were to facilitate voluntary counseling and testing (VCT), prevention of mother-to-child transmission as well as to support orphans and vulnerable people in societies, among other key programmes.
However, in 2010, the Global Fund Office of the Investigator General conducted an audit of MMCI in relation to the funds it received from ZNAN and discovered irregularities on the part of Mrs Mwanawasa’s organization in that it mismanaged or misappropriated K1.25 million on unsupported expenditures.
A report was issued by the Global Fund Office of the Investigator General in October 2010, in which it recommended the recovery of the funds.
ZNAN, in its statement of claim, said MMCI failed to furnish the investigation team from the Zambia Police Service supporting documents for the purported expenditures of the money received from it.
But today, Mrs Mwanawasa wants to be the new executive mayor of Lusaka.
What cheek! What confidence!
How can someone who has failed to account for donor funds even think of being the executive mayor of Lusaka, the cpital city. Unlike the role of First Lady, the position of mayor under the new constitution is an executive position, and Mrs Mwanawasa would do herself and the residents of Lusaka a favour if she realized that accountability will be one of the values that the new mayor will be expected to bring to the office.
We all know the challenges that Lusaka faces; how the council fails to account for levies collected in markets and bus stations, how illegal land allocations have become the norm, and the like.
Certainly a person who failed to account for money, meant to HIV/AIDS (a huge national burden itself), should be the last person queuing up so as to supretend over the affairs of Lusaka.
Please, bring somebody else.
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