Full contribution
HON. MARIDADI: Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity to debate. Technical issues on the economy, technical issues on how money should be raised and how money should be allocated and spent has been dealt with quite elaborately. Issues of legislation, what the Minister must do pertaining to legislation have been dealt with. The last time I stood up to debate the Budget in the last session, I said that Hon. Chinamasa was a very honest man and that he was a very good Minister of Finance but his problem then was that he was working for a very bad boss.
However, now there is new sheriff in town, Hon. Chinamasa has a good boss and it is a new dispensation. Madam Speaker, I want to deal with the political issues of this Budget. When I got married as a young man, my mother said to me, now that you are in a marriage, there is company that you cannot keep because it does not add value to your new style of life.
Madam Speaker, our President is the groom, this country is the bride. There is a company that the President kept before he became President that he cannot afford to continue to keep because we are in a new dispensation. The President must now start to make very painful decisions and say there are some people that he can no longer be able to associate with because of who they are.
Madam Speaker, I want to deal with the issue of corruption. There are people in this country who when you mention about their names or when you talk about corruption, you cannot construct a sentence which talks about corruption and not mention their names. Their names have become so synonymous with the word corruption. They are so embedded and that is the kind of company our President cannot afford to keep anymore.
Madam Speaker, the President in his inauguration speech said there will be zero tolerance to corruption and that there will be no sacred cows. There are people that seat in Cabinet today with His Excellency, that I think must be excused. They must be excused, go under due process and they must clear their names. We are in Parliament here to assist the Executive to run this country. When we are in this Parliament, we have not come here to make friends, Hon. Minister of Finance, Madam Speaker. If in the process of debating in order to placate our country from the economic problems that it has, if it means in the process we must loose friends, for me, so be it. I am addressing this in particular, to His Excellency, the President and I am saying this, Your Excellency, in your Cabinet, when you have a man like Hon. Obert Mpofu, the Minister of Home Affairs, you have a problem.
There is a problem of 15 billion dollars that this country must deal with. We were told by the former President and I do not think he was wrong. The former President said, 15 billion dollars either in money or in diamonds disappeared. The person who was in charge of mines then was Hon. Obert Mpofu.
Madam Speaker, the President cannot continue to be seen working with Hon. Obert Mpofu who is now the Minister of Home Affairs if he has not gone through due process which clears him of that corruption. I think what must happen and there will be no sacred cows, that is what the President said and I am taking a leaf from what the President has said.
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