Gideon Gono a blown fuse in the circuit

Under siege Reserve Bank Governor fighting tooth and knail to keep a job he said he was not in need of not so long ago
There is a Shona adage that says when the African drum produces the best sounds it is about to rupture.

Nothing exemplifies the meaning of the adage than the recent outbursts by unprocedurally appointed Reserve Bank Governor Dr Gideon Gono over his unprocedural release of Central bank motor vehicles for use by Members of Parliament (MP’s).

The Zimbabwe Government is structured into the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature as an internal control mechanism for power counter balancing in State administration necessary to minimise State excesses.

The Executive Secretariat is provided by Permanent Functional Heads of its diverse Business Units which are called Ministries while the Legislature has its own secretariat led by the Clerk of parliament and the Judiciary’s secretariat is provided by the Secretary of Justice.

Each government Ministry is structured in a manner that is deemed most appropriate to deliver its mandate and in many instances the Ministries are divided into Strategic Business Units headed by semi autonomous Business Unit Managers.

The Reserve Bank is one such Strategic Business Unit under the critical ministry of Finance charged with specific responsibilities to manage national fiscal policies and provide Statutory banking services for Government Departments as well as act as bank of last resort in the country and thus supervisory authority in the financial services industry.

The bank came into existence as a result of an Act of parliament and is a critical business unit in the management of public funds under the control of the government.

Before the coalition government took over the mandate to govern the country key Functional and Divisional heads were appointed to head the Strategic Business Units of the State on recommendations to the President by the government Human Resources Consultancy called the Ministry of Public Service which has an expert HR department headed by Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwah called the Public Service Commission in respect of Senior Executive Appointments, the Judicial Service Commission in respect of Senior Judicial Appointments and other commissions to deal with senior Military, Prisons, Parastatals and the Police as well as Special commissions.

After the GPA President Mugabe is now required to discuss these recommendations with Premier Morgan Tsvangirai and the Deputy Premiers as well as the Vice presidents and reach a consensus with them before effecting them.

What that means is that all coalition government strategic appointments must be vetted and accepted by the Presidium and the Premiership before they can be effected.

This is causing President Mugabe sleepless nights because it is such a departure from the custom and practice where he had frozen out other interest groups from having a say in key statutory appointments and built a loyalist club around the key HR function who always presented him with Zanu PF loyalists for confirmation of appointment in the key positions.

Although the same people are still around and doing all in their power to give him the names he wants to hear about and appoint the problem now is that the Minister of the Public service is no longer from his Zanu PF political formation and he can no longer rely on him for advice as to the political suitability of the people recommended to him for appointment.

Further and more pertinently the entire premiership has names of equally competent and in many instances better qualified and untarnished possible appointees whom they argue have more to give to the nation than the tried and tested but failed names recommended by the HR Commissions whose impartiality is questionable anyhow given their self confessed and or reputed links with Zanu PF.

If all names on the recommended list can be linked in one way or another to Zanu PF, which has not been that difficult for the Premiership to expose, the Presidium finds itself in the unenviable task of dismissing allegation of the proposed appointments being persuaded more by political affiliation than by qualification and expertise held by the candidates.

That is the reason why the Premiership took the trouble of requesting the foresight of the CV’s of the Permanent Secretaries, Ambassadors, Heads of Parastatals, Heads of National Commissions, Military Commanders, The Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney General before rushing to meet Mugabe over inclusivity at Strategic Business Unit level in the coalition government.

In all instances of reviews of the CV’s linked current and proposed incumbents of the posts to Zanu PF and they were matched with other CV’s from applicants without Zanu PF links and the stage is now set for President to justify the appointments in place or proposed within the spirit and letter of inclusivity and meritocracy given the overlooked alternatives the MDC has matched to current and proposed candidates.

In the case of Gono and Tomana no less than three better qualified professionals whose political affiliations are not disclosed have been matched with current incumbents and President Mugabe is finding great difficulty in explaining why the incumbents were preferable other than for their loyalty to Zanu PF as not only are their qualifications inferior but their past performance has achieved negative outcomes.

The militarisation of Parastatals management has seen some of the poorest qualified appointments being confirmed to head the critical State Companies and their ultimate collapse under the stewardship of retired Army Colonels, Brigadiers and Majors as well as Senior Assistant Police Commissioners most of whom have the slightest idea of modern management theory and practice nor experience in successfully managing civilian operatives.

The impressive business track record successes and academic achievements of names counter proposed by the Premiership to be considered alongside those recommended by the Public service Commission in respect of all the key positions in dispute has been presented to President Mugabe who in turn has tasked his technocrat confidantes George Charamba, Dr Misheck Sibanda and Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwah to give him the substance to use in dismissing challengers proposed by the Premiership.

The trio has tried its best but in several instances has conceded that the Premiership proposals were unmatched by anyone from their contingent.

That sadly was the case in the RBZ and Attorney general contest to name the most topical of the contests.

Word has filtered to Gono that his backers in the contest have carved in and it is now his revered friend and Principal President Mugabe to save him if he can.

Gono who has used his first tenure of office at the central bank to bribe anyone he got into contact with, with generous donations of cash, vehicles, tractors, harrows, hoes, chains you name it was not at all amused.

Like the brat he has always been he has decided it is time to get back at those that benefited from his quasi-fiscal misdemeanours using State funds who are no longer openly supporting him now that he is under fire.

After being told by Minister of Finance at Vitoria Falls government bonding retreat to stop distributing RBZ vehicles to MP’s who are not in any way staff of the Central Bank where he is the Functional Head and ignored he was surprised with a written demand from the minister to recall unprocedurally distributed Bank vehicles he had donated to MP’s no more than two weeks after the Minister had publicly dismissed the rift between him and the Minister as a creation of the Media which was without basis.

Instead of pausing to digest the implications of the ministerial order, the Reserve Bank Chief reacted in the amateurish manner of the spoilt brat he has been ever since he was elevated to lead the Jewel Bank and later on the Reserve Bank.

He chose to extend the order to recall the irregularly issued vehicles to imply the recall of all the goodies he doled out in the quasi-fiscal operations he solely initiated and executed over 5 years.

His childish motive being that by expanding the dispute to cover other beneficiaries of his illegal actions he will have the muscle to silence the finance minister and his detractors.

Legislator Makosini Hlongwane, himself a beneficiary of the quasi-fiscal activities of the central bank quickly formed a Legislative Workers’ Committee to declare that the Finance Minister will get his way if he first manages to reverse the various donations that the Bank has doled out in the past.

Alluding to the stock accounting principle of first in first out Hlongwane believes he can intimidate the minister with the prospect of confronting chaotic land reforms that have damaged our economy.

Little does he know that it is Gideon Gono who must account for the donations he made without parliamentary approval and he should be leading that cause in the national interest which he was elected to defend?

Hlongwane and his backers in parliament must be made aware that the money Gono used was not his but the taxpayers’. As the people’s watchdog the legislature must play the role of ensuring the State accounts for expenditures from the fiscus in an open and transparent manner and get irritated when Legislators stoop to the level of defenders of unprocedural spending by the State.

Now that Gono has a reliable ally in Hlongwane’s Legislators Workers Committee we must of necessity fall back on the safety net of the principled Minister of Finance and implore him to set up a Parliamentary select Committee to investigate the disclosures Gono made in his angry reaction to the recall of vehicles issued to Legislators by the Central Bank and without treasury authority.

The terms of reference for such a committee must be to establish by what authority the Reserve Bank head authorised the theft of forex from individual and foreign accounts held in private banking institutions.

Further the amount stolen and what it was used for and by whom.

In addition to that the Committee must investigate how much was loaned to whom through the people’s shops and the farm mechanisation projects including how much of the Taxpayer’s funds were used in these initiatives’ administration expenses and the profits they generated for the State.

The committee should also investigate how much of the loans the Governor claims to have advanced have been refunded and to what extent the recovery complies with the lending terms.

More importantly the Committee must be mandated to establish the legality of the expenditures the Central Bank incurred over the past 5 years and make recommendations as to the suitability of Dr Gono being allowed to hold a function as critical as he does now.

That is how working democracies deal with alleged non compliance with laid down policies and procedures.

In Gono’s case he has tacitly pleaded guilty and all that remains is to establish the extent of his guilt and the possible benefits that motivated him to breach standing rules and treasury instructions.

We will not be surprised to see the names of the same MP’s now declaring they will not abide by rules consistently featuring in such an investigation.