Gono must keep his mouth shut!

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/inflation121.15608.html
By Tendai Biti
Last updated: 12/12/2006 17:33:35
IN THE corridors of the Zanu PF government, hardly a day passes without unprecedented episodes that are both tragic and comic.

The on going spat between Finance minister Hebert Murerwa and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono is one such episode reflecting the concoction of both the tragic and the laughable in the Zanu PF corridors o power.

Several months ago, we made the point that this government is full of cartoon characters and we were not far from the truth.

At the centre of the fall-out between Gono and Murerwa is the $400 billio printed and spent by the RBZ governor in an unprecedented spree of quasi-fiscal expenditure. The net effect of the quasi-fiscal adventurism was to increase money supply by 1000 percent.

According to Murerwa, this growth in money supply (M3) was at the core of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation. Put crudely, in as far as Murerwa is concerned, Gono is the architect of the country's defined number one enemy: inflation.

In his defence, Gono has produced correspondence that shows that the quasi-fiscal expenditure was at the express request and approval by Murerwa.

In addition, he has justified quasi-fiscal adventurism on the basis of "urgency" and "emergency situations." The MDC believes that whatever correspondence and whatever requests by Murerwa, Gono had no right to succumb to the seduction of fiscal insanity.

For starters, in terms of section 6 of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act, Gono's brief is a monetary one, no more no less. More important is the unconstitutional nature of Gono's activities. In terms of the Zimbabwe Constitution, section 102 (3), all government expenditure should come from the Consolidated Revenue Fund and it should be approved by Parliament.

Gono's adventures were not. Thus in a way, Gono stole from the Consolidated Revenue Fund and he owes the nation an apology for the theft and for breaching the provisions of the Constitution.

His plea of "urgency" is also a misplaced one. Even assuming that urgent payments were to be made, the Minister of Finance has the powers and the right of bringing an urgent supplementary budget before Parliament for it approval. This has happened before. In 2002, when Simba Makoni was Finance minister and Charles Kuwaza the Permanent Secretary, an urgent supplementary budget was brought before the House, which adjourned in the early hours of the following morning.

Moreover, in terms of section 26 of the of the Audit and Exchequer Act, the President has the powers to authorize the withdrawal of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for unforeseen and emergency payments. This defeats Gono's argument of a crisis situation because the funds could still have been availed legally. Quite clearly, Gono should plead no contest by keeping his mouth shut.

However, to blame Gono alone for the structural crisis the country finds itself in is being puerile and dishonest. Gono may have made the situation worse, but he did not author the Zimbabwean crisis.

The author of the crisis is Mr Robert Mugabe and his cronies and acolytes at Munhumutapa Building. They have presided over a country which is in its ninth straight year of economic recession, a country with a record inflation rate which realistically stands at over 3000 percent, a country with an unemployment rate of over 80 percent, a country with no foreign currency for critical imports and where vital sectors such as health and education have basically collapsed.

The buck stops with Mugabe, the real Johnny Bravo of this cartoon thriller that this regime has become
Tendai Biti, MP is the Secretary-General of the MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai