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No such thing as a free wooden lizard in... Individual pursuit of profit is the true... |
No such thing as a free wooden lizard in the business forestACCORDING to the recently published register of members' interests in parliament, Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal was given a carved wooden lizard by Indonesia's forestry ministry. This may, on the surface, appear to be an innocent gesture of friendship, but it has sinister undertones. The Indonesian forestry ministry doesn't really have much to do since it managed to burn down most of its forests last year. Clearly, it is eyeing global opportunities and looking around for other countries' forests to reduce to ashes. Despite Indonesia's appallingly corrupt and nepotic political system (paradoxically, precisely the sort of thing the ANC fought against when in opposition), the SA government evidently feels that these are people with whom we should be doing business. There is a well-known saying in business; there is no such thing as a free wooden lizard. Asmal would do well to remember that when he privatises the forests. The publication of the register of members' interests, in which MPs are required to disclose any gifts received with a value of R350 or more, is intended to be a serious document created to give the electorate the impression that we are being ruled by people with only the most noble motives. Unfortunately, it's release just over a week ago leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that this is just another ruse on the part of the government to persuade us that they are marginally more honest than their predecessors. Are we really interested in whether politicians receive T-shirts, cufflinks and pen and pencil sets while the more important issues of accountability and good governance are ignored? Within a week of the list's publication, The Sunday Times had already revealed that seven MPs representing various parties were flown on a junket to Texas by Bell Helicopter. Surprisingly, none of them thought this worth a mention in the register. Indeed, Tony Yengeni of the ANC defended the omission by saying: "When I go on these trips I'm not going to a Greek island to lie on my back. It's work and I don't see any reason why I have to declare it." Yengeni complains that he doesn't even enjoy the trips because it means that he has to be away from his family. He is, of course, completely missing the point. Should a lucrative contract be given to Bell Helicopter in future we will be very interested in what, if anything, was agreed on the country's behalf by Yengeni and his fellow travellers while being entertained by that company. I don't think his enjoyment or otherwise is particularly relevant. Without doubt, any register of members' interests is better than no register at all, and for that the ANC should be applauded. However, if the list merely becomes an annual diversion, designed to distract an electorate with an already short attention span from what is really going on in government, then it may as well be scrapped now. Democratic Party leader Tony Leon is absolutely correct when he says that unless the register is taken seriously by MPs it will amount to "ornamental window dressing". What the register can never hope to do, though, is to disclose those many odd relationships in politics which allow relatives and friends of influential politicians to successfully tender for lucrative government contracts without ever having had any relevant experience in the area concerned. For that we need to open all government tenders to public scrutiny before a final contract is awarded. In fact, the fewer secrets there are between government and the people the better. The grand architect of the register of members' interests was, in fact, Asmal, one of the ANC's few performing assets and a man who sincerely conveys his commitment to open and clean government without sounding smarmy and hypocritical. Evidently fired up with enthusiasm for the culture of disclosure, he is now suggesting that leading business people and newspaper editors perform the financial equivalent of "the full monty" by revealing all. "Why should they hide behind arguments for privacy when this is out of step with the age of disclosure in which we now live?" he asks. Well, one reason is that, unlike politicians, they are not paid out of our taxes and do not rely on the electorate for their jobs. In the case of leading business figures, their financial positions are often published (to their intense embarrassment) by financial magazines. Newspaper editors, it is well known, are impoverished and merely devoted to printing the truth.
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