Deal firmly with cases of graft among MPs

What you need to know:

  • By virtue of its role, the PAC plays a critical role in checking government expenditures. Its members are expected to be of high moral standing and beyond reproach.
  • Cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries and parastatal chiefs have complained of intimidation and blackmail by House committees.

Corruption claims that swirled around the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC)in the past few days brought to question the integrity of the House in its entirety.

This was not the first time such claims were coming out, only that the voices were louder. For good measure, the committee members moved a confidence vote on their chairman, Mr Ababu Namwamba, who scrapped through by a whisker.

By virtue of its role, the PAC plays a critical role in checking government expenditures. Its members are expected to be of high moral standing and beyond reproach.

So, when the committee is accused of complicity and irregularities, then everyone has every reason to be worried and feel betrayed.

Broadly, the public has lost confidence in Parliament because the members no longer serve its interests. Quite often, motions are won or lost on the account of monies that changed hands.

INTIMIDATION

Organisations that seek to curry favour with the House have learnt to lavish the members with junket trips, allowances or cash to support their cause.

Cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries and parastatal chiefs have complained of intimidation and blackmail by House committees.

The committees have perfected the art of instigating investigations on anything and everything within ministries or organisations within their purview ostensibly to find opportunities for extortion.

Thus, the teams have perverted the sacrosanct duty of playing oversight duty on the Executive and turned it into a money-minting enterprise.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the committees cannot be investigated by independent anti-corruption agencies because members have parliamentary immunity.

Even so, the Speaker and the Parliamentary Service Commission must find ways and means of reining in corrupt MPs. All cases of impropriety must be dealt with ruthlessly.