Editorial: Contracts-chasing legislators in town!

Parliamentarians and senators are once more in Yaounde for the end of year session to be dominated by deliberations on the 2015 state budget. Apart from passing the finance bills, often with minor “editing”, they tell their constituents who care to ask, that they also “control government actions.”

By controlling government actions the understanding, and rightly so, is by correcting unreasonable state policy. They are also obliged to “control” through investigations, questions, recommendations for prosecutions and legislative enquiry into reported scandals.

But do they do that? It’s an unequivocal no. How would they when many are pseudo contractors competing unduly for jobs with struggling business people whose sole source of income comes from contracts?

When the session opened last Wednesday, House speaker, Cavaye Djibril who unlike a leopard is gradually changing his spot, rattled articulate observers when he indicted the executive for a miserable 37 per cent execution rate of this year’s investment allocations.

It is a dismal failure. Those in charge of ensuring that the projects budgeted in various ministries and localities are realised include ministers, vote holders and members of the various tender boards. Just less than 11 months ago, President Biya asked why the investment allocations were not being fully used.

The presidential agony would have frightened and spurred those concerned to sit up. But the result as released by the House speaker is far off from satisfaction.

Previously, the ready-made excuse for lagging in the execution of the investment budget was that the financial year start in July and contracts awarded in the peak of the rains which made it difficult to work especially in the road sector.

The financial year was re-arranged to begin in January and the next excuse was the delay in the contract awarding procedure. The functions of the “big contract” awarding authority were then placed under the portfolio of a new ministry of public contracts which is not only responsible for “big contracts” but overwhelmed with small ones down to five million francs.

The ministry then created its numerous tender boards with chairpersons earning 100. 000FCFA while members got 75.000CFA per session, instead of a monthly salary. The management snag is that to earn more money, a board can decide to sit ten times a month to award contracts they would have effectively used just two sessions to do.

That significantly delays the process and creates room for corruption. Why do the boards often drag its feet to a week before announcing the winner after their deliberation? Isn’t that done deliberately to give room for contractors to “buy” the jobs behind closed doors? Why, with the decentralisation process shouldn’t each council be allowed to create its own tender board knowing that “many hands do light work” and faster?

The new excuse for the delay in giving out contracts is the introduction of the “programmed budgeting” system. But were there not so many seminars held before the system was introduced? Is the executive incapable of curbing the manifold ways in which the execution of contracts to build classrooms, health centres, provide good drinking water and roads continues to be deplorable?

The bottom line is that the executive has failed in its 2014 development initiative. If the trend is not arrested, attaining the 2035 objectives to emerge could be a pipe dream. But the trend could be halted if parliamentarians and senators assert their freedom and authority by wriggling out of the grip of the executive realm and “party discipline”.

As “controllers of government actions”, it falls on the shoulders of legislators to get the executive give an explanation, not only on the poor execution of contracts but on the various scandals that have rocked the nations while they were on “recess”.

If they should be reminded, wouldn’t the honourables ask the minister of territorial administration and decentralization who is supervisory authority of councils what action has been taken when it was found out that: two caterpillars where supplied in two councils in Lebialem for 30MFCFA a piece and the “contractor” paid 600MFCFA from the public investment budget, when a jalopy vehicle was supplied in Alou council and paid for as a new one with the tax payer’s money?

What of the situation in Muyuka where money was paid for a water project that the out gone executive lied that the service was rendered?

Wouldn’t the legislators ask the prime minister to brief them publicly if the land illegally grabbed by administrators in Fako has been confiscated and distributed to those who deserve it? Why would the Mezam SDO suspend a commission set up to find out why 26MFCFA was used to transfer office equipment to a distance of less than a kilometre in Tubah?

Those are probing questions The Guardian Post urges senators and parliamentarians to find answers from the executive who should be preparing for replies so as not to parry the questions in the House when the time comes.

To have the courage and honour to ask such probing questions, legislators cannot go to equity with dirty hands. Many senators and parliamentarians are contractors. They put unnecessary pressure on contract board chairpersons to give them contracts which they either sell or do not execute them well. One of the divisional delegates of the ministry of public contract has overtly made that complaint against them.

There is no law that prohibits legislators from being contractors. But if a legislator really wants to do his work in controlling government actions, it would be incompatible to combine the functions of a senator or parliamentarian with that of a contractor. Such a legislators cum contractor will also not have the moral clout to scrutinise a minister to whom he knows he has to fall back to beg for favours. Can’t the legislators in their internal rules bar their colleagues from combining the two functions?

We at The Guardian Post are also of the candid view that it is time the senate and parliament set up their own commissions of enquiry so as to be able to investigate some of the scandals independently and make recommendations to the executive. That, we believe, is controlling government actions and making the executive accountable to the people as is the case in real democratic societies.