WHO PAID TO INDUCT OUR MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT? Reports indicate that the official induction of our newly elected Members of Parliament was sponsored by insurance companies among them ZSIC Life, A-Plus General, Goldman Insurance, and General Alliance. We should be clear about what this means before we get used to it. Parliament is not a […]

WHO PAID TO INDUCT OUR MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT?

Reports indicate that the official induction of our newly elected Members of Parliament was sponsored by insurance companies among them ZSIC Life, A-Plus General, Goldman Insurance, and General Alliance.

We should be clear about what this means before we get used to it.

Parliament is not a conference. It is not a product launch. It is the one institution in this country whose entire authority rests on owing nothing to anyone but the people who elected it. The moment a corporate logo appears on the programme that welcomes a member into that House, something has been quietly conceded.

Let us take the questions in turn.

First, what do these companies want from Parliament?

Insurance is one of the most heavily legislated sectors in our economy. This House will debate compulsory insurance requirements. It will debate the tax treatment of premiums and reserves. It will debate the powers of the Pensions and Insurance Authority. It will debate state-backed schemes, motor insurance, and health insurance, and who is obliged to buy what.

Every one of those debates is worth money to the companies that paid for this induction.

We are not saying that any sponsor asked for anything. We do not know that, and we do not allege it. We are saying something simpler and harder to answer: no honest person can now say with certainty that nothing was bought. That uncertainty is itself the damage. It did not exist before the cheques were written, and Parliament can not now remove it.

Access is the cheapest thing money can buy in politics, and the most valuable. You do not need to ask a legislator for a favour on the day you feed him. You need only to be remembered.

Second, whose money was this?

An insurer does not print money. It holds premiums paid by ordinary Zambians the small trader insuring his van, the family paying into a funeral policy, the worker whose employer took out cover on his behalf. That money exists to pay claims. It is held under statutory reserving and solvency rules precisely because it is not the company’s to spend as it pleases.

So we are entitled to ask the boards of these companies a direct question: by what resolution, and under which line of your budget, did you decide that your policyholders’ interests were served by catering a parliamentary function?

And here we must correct something being said loosely in this debate. ZSIC Life is not a private company. It is a subsidiary of the Industrial Development Corporation, which is wholly owned by the Government of the Republic of Zambia. It is a state-owned insurer.

Consider what that means. A company owned by the Executive helped pay for the induction of the legislature whose constitutional duty is to hold the Executive to account. Public money, routed through a state company, spent on hosting the House that is supposed to scrutinise how public money is spent.

That is not a conflict of interest. That is a circle.

Third, why could Parliament not pay for itself?

The National Assembly has a budget. It is appropriated by this same Parliament and drawn from the Consolidated Fund. Inducting members is not a peripheral activity that Parliament might do if a donor turns up. It is a core function of the institution — the very process by which a citizen is turned into a legislator.

If that budget was inadequate, the answer was to say so publicly and ask the Treasury. Instead, the gap was filled quietly by commercial patrons.

A Parliament that can not afford to induct its own Members without corporate help should tell the nation it is underfunded. A parliament that can afford it and took the sponsorship anyway has a different problem.

On the defence that will be offered

We know what will be said. That this was corporate social responsibility. That the sponsors sought nothing. That there was no policy discussion. That Parliament has received external support before.

It has. Parliament has, for years, worked with cooperating partners on the training of members. But there is a plain difference between a development partner with no commercial interest in Zambian legislation, funding a programme through a transparent agreement, and a regulated industry with everything to gain from a particular committee, paying for the party.

Good intentions are not a governance framework. The test is not whether anyone behaved badly. The test is whether the arrangement made bad behaviour harder to detect. It did.

What should now happen

Madam Speaker should cause the National Assembly to publish, in full, what this induction cost, what each sponsor contributed, what each received in visibility or access, and who authorised the arrangement. If Parliament will not disclose it, it should not have accepted it.

The National Assembly should then adopt a standing rule: no commercial entity may sponsor any official function of the House. Not an induction, not a retreat, not a dinner. The Parliamentary and Ministerial Code of Conduct already recognises that Members must not place themselves under obligation. The institution should hold itself to the standard it sets for its members.

The Pensions and Insurance Authority should ask its licensees, in the ordinary course of supervision, what policyholder funds were applied to this and how it was approved at board level. The Authority’s own governance guidelines define a conflict of interest clearly enough.

And, the Industrial Development Corporation should explain to the Zambian people why a company it owns on their behalf was funding hospitality for Parliament.

We hold no seats in this House. We have no member who was inducted at that event and no favour to protect. We raise this for one reason only: a Parliament that learns, in its first week, to be grateful to business, will spend five years being grateful to business.

Parliament belongs to the people who elected it. It should be paid for by them, and beholden to no one else.

Fred M’membe
SP President