THE TWISTER BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA
The writing is on the wall. Malawians are discontented with the current administration and its failure to address pertinent issues raised in their July 20 petition. That the people's efforts to hold a peaceful vigil are also being frustrated will only make matters worse.
The poor turnout at the president's whistle-stop tours in various townships punctuated by some ruling party officials being booed at, jeered at are all tale-tell signs that many people are getting fed up with an administration that has lost direction and respect for the people who voted them in power.
The people's demands are straight forward. Malawians will not allow any leader in the current political dispensation to throw away their Constitutional rights. It does not matter that those in power are capable of commandeering the trigger-happy police officers to gun down unarmed protestors in the streets as it happened during the July 20 protests.
The Malawi Human Rights Commission findings have just confirmed what most Malawians already knew that many who died on July 20 died from gun shots. Of the 19 who died, 15 of them died from gun wounds. Everyone knows who was carrying guns on that fateful day – our own police.
Now as people are planning to hold peaceful demonstrations on August 17, the authorities are back at it issuing threats. In his whistle-stop tours, president Mutharika had no kind words for the organizers of the demonstrations. It is quite evident that, Mutharika and his advisors have lost touch with reality. Whether this is because the president is getting bad advice or that he is ignoring good advice, only he knows.
Perhaps, it's time for Mutharika to do some serious soul-searching by asking himself why is it that all of a sudden the peace-loving Malawians who voted for him en masse are suddenly turning their backs on him. Maybe before getting into the streets and making his outbursts during his road shows, he needs to find out how and where he lost the people's confidence.
Why are people just ignoring all the threats and pleas he is making? Mutharika should be asking himself why Malawians are insisting that come what may they are ready to protest their discontent in the streets, when all along they have been regarded as a docile people.
To try and shut the people up or to use the state machinery to intimidate them will only make matters worse. It is primitive politics to think that people can be threatened into submission while their human rights are being trampled upon. In a democracy, leaders only have their legitimacy to rule in as long as they also respect the rule of law and uphold good governance.
If government can just listen and address the concerns of the people, nobody would talk of protesting or holding a vigil. Intead of cherry picking what demands they will respond to, why is government not listening to the petitioners demands and addressing them appropriately, rather than waste time with empty outbursts and threats.
We wonder why it is so difficult for government to just scrap off bad laws like Section 46 of the Penal Code and the Injunction Law. Instead they are busy trying to justify laws that are clearly designed to put Malawians under the yoke of repression.
Those in power need to realize that no amount of belligerence, arrogance, threats and insults will intimidate Malawians from reclaiming good governance which is already theirs by law.
As Malawians wish to be expressing their Constitutional right of peaceful assembly, association and expression, the onus is on the government to ensure that democracy as a system of government works and human rights and the respect of human dignity and freedom is respected. Any attempt by those in power or their agents to prevent the citizenry from expressing their rights as enshrined in the Constitution will only ferment further discontent and fuel more protests and vigils.
No comments:
Post a Comment