Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa’s bizarre response to The Standard’s lead story of June 25, 2017 exposing serious flaws in the funding of government’s Command Agriculture programme cannot go unchallenged because it is premised on falsehoods.
BY KHOLWANI NYATHI
Chinamasa’s false statements were dutifully regurgitated in the most unprofessional manner by the Herald of June 26, 2017 under the headline: Chinamasa clarifies Command Agric.
Our story headlined: VP Mnangagwa project bombshell, was based on a document originated by the Finance ministry and revealed that Chinamasa had ignored advice about the potential prejudice to government running into millions of dollars after the purported main funder of the programme, Sakunda Holdings, breached provisions of the agreement.
The ministry’s Public Debt Management Office, in an advisory note, says the government is funding the programme despite repeated claims by various senior officials that it is bankrolled by the private sector.
It also raised a number of serious issues that have arisen in the implementation of the Special Maize Programme, also known as Command Agriculture, with a potential of worsening Zimbabwe’s indebtedness.
Instead of responding to the damaging allegations raised in the advisory note, which is not in dispute, Chinamasa sought to cast aspersions on the integrity of The Standard by claiming that he was alerted by a faceless member of our team last Thursday that a negative story about Command Agriculture was being written.
He also claimed without shame that an unnamed Cabinet minister helped to edit the said story.
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For the record, The Standard only received the document from a whistleblower on Saturday morning and, therefore, Chinamasa’s allegations that he was alerted on Thursday are only driven by malice and are a futile attempt to mask his incompetence.
The source of the story was none other than frustrated officials in the Finance ministry itself.
We challenge the minister to provide his telephone records with the phantom member of The Standard team who alerted him about the alleged plot.
The same should be said about the alleged Cabinet minister who is said to have assisted in the editing of the story: He only exists in Chinamasa’s fertile imagination.
The Standard, as a fiercely independent paper, does not outsource any of its news production processes and there was no need to do otherwise in this instance because the advisory note is so explicit and detailed about the rot in Chinamasa’s office that even a primary schoolchild can comprehend the level of incompetence and dereliction of duty by the minister.
The whistleblower was frustrated that even after the advisory note was generated as far back as last month raising the red flag about Sakunda Holdings, Chinamasa had done nothing to protect public funds and was intent on expanding the company’s involvement in the programme.
After that damning advisory note, the government embarked on the so-called command wheat programme and is planning command livestock, command irrigation, command fisheries and command horticulture programmes using the same funding model.
Journalists do not need the help of ministers to understand that such conduct has serious ramifications for public finances.
Chinamasa is throwing mud at the messenger because he has been exposed for recklessly allowing a flawed financing model of the Command Agriculture programme.
In his rambling response in the Herald, the minister does not even attempt to address the substantial issues raised in the story and seeks to divert attention to the infighting in Zanu PF, which has nothing to do with us.
We challenge Chinamasa to respond to the serious allegations raised in the advisory note, which we reproduce below.
[su_document url=”https://www.thestandard.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Public-Debt-Document.pdf”]
*Kholwani Nyathi is the editor of The Standard
