Archive for July 2009
Biti’s ‘kiya-kiya’ performance treacherous
Posted by: webmaster
By Professor Jonathan Moyo, MP
AS leaders of various sectors of the economy and other pundits lined up last week to offer their perfunctory statements hailing embattled Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s mid-term budget review delivered in Parliament on Thursday in a sitting whose attendance was unusually poor for the important occasion,
it was instructive to observe that none of them dared comment on the sub-text of the minister’s review which was more telling than his text.
Perhaps the reason why some commentators have taken a safe approach in their assessment of the mid-term budget is because they feared that the sub-text of Minister Biti’s speech was so manifestly treacherous, inflammatory and smacked of a sinister agenda.
But playing it safe for the sake of keeping the peace in a fragile political environment is not good enough when the beneficiary of that approach does not himself care about setting the place on fire. Principles of good governance and accountability — about which Minister Biti’s MDC-T party makes a lot of endless noise — requires that Government officials, especially ministers of finance who are the custodians of public funds, are subjected to the strictest scrutiny for what they officially say or do in the name of the public, particularly where tax dollars are concerned.
It is against this backdrop that the sub-text of Minister Biti’s mid-term budget speech, which was truly a "kiya-kiya" performance, should not be left without scrutiny. Indeed, even his market-based text which has been hailed by some sections of the economy, with the notable exception of trade unions, did not live up to the expectations of the wider community, not least because it was sterile, unimaginative and predictable.
AS leaders of various sectors of the economy and other pundits lined up last week to offer their perfunctory statements hailing embattled Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s mid-term budget review delivered in Parliament on Thursday in a sitting whose attendance was unusually poor for the important occasion,
it was instructive to observe that none of them dared comment on the sub-text of the minister’s review which was more telling than his text.
Perhaps the reason why some commentators have taken a safe approach in their assessment of the mid-term budget is because they feared that the sub-text of Minister Biti’s speech was so manifestly treacherous, inflammatory and smacked of a sinister agenda.
But playing it safe for the sake of keeping the peace in a fragile political environment is not good enough when the beneficiary of that approach does not himself care about setting the place on fire. Principles of good governance and accountability — about which Minister Biti’s MDC-T party makes a lot of endless noise — requires that Government officials, especially ministers of finance who are the custodians of public funds, are subjected to the strictest scrutiny for what they officially say or do in the name of the public, particularly where tax dollars are concerned.
It is against this backdrop that the sub-text of Minister Biti’s mid-term budget speech, which was truly a "kiya-kiya" performance, should not be left without scrutiny. Indeed, even his market-based text which has been hailed by some sections of the economy, with the notable exception of trade unions, did not live up to the expectations of the wider community, not least because it was sterile, unimaginative and predictable.