Auditors routinely discover glaring mishaps in public expenditure that border on a scandal, and before the media has finished digesting what happened, another one is on the table, even bigger than the previous one.
Trying to figure out how all this rot can be cleared is genuinely problematic, and let it be said without mincing words that being fearful of presidential action isn’t what ensures success.
Those in the system know quite well that there are areas where not even angels dear tread, but, paradoxically, it is from those very quarters that some of the most glaring drawbacks in public accountability have been noticed.
It is of course laudable that owing to the no-nonsense stance of the current governance, the public gets to know more or less immediately when something nasty happens, since a stretch of public bodies are trying to make it possible that public agencies are run in an orderly and disciplined manner.
When they meet with these mishaps they speak out loud, not just to show that they are working, but that they are pained.
There is something in the current order of things that reminds some of us of former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw virtually the collapse of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1990, when supervising arguably one of the most turbulent and unpredictable patches of political disorder in the Western hemisphere.
The former KGB chieftain, head of the country’s security apparatus and then Communist Party secretary general, he discovered that ‘glasnost,’ (transparency) wasn’t enough and thus thoroughgoing reform was vital. So he embarked on ‘perestroika,’ which lead to the collapse of the old system.
As was the case with the old Soviet Union, there is an antiquated system in Tanzania where scores of organizations depend solely on ministerial fiat and their heads are presidential appointees who bask in glory for being the president’s right-hand people.
There was a time when government became dysfunctional simply because one presidential appointee couldn’t tell off another presidential appointee, and both of them jostled for influence in the inner circles of the ruling party or the cabinet.
When the heat is too intense to bear, the president makes a reshuffle of ministers, permanent secretaries, regional commissioners or district commissioners, and the merry go round starts all over again. Changes apart, it is the same story all over again.
African states, for some reason or other, take too long to figure out that controlling corruption in a system dominated by the public sector is next to impossible, even with countries having resolute ruling parties founded on revolutionary principles and which go as far as executing their own corrupt cadres, such as China.
We do not have that kind of political party and the president is trying to reform the presidency to ensure good behavior among his appointees and the system as a whole.
There is however a risk of the president carrying too much for one person. The way out is to institute measures which will ensure that the system works ethically. It calls for a more pronounced level of competition in the economy and the society to sow probity.
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