Malawi UDF in strategic myopia

TWISTER

Like all the opposition parties, it is obvious that the United Democratic Front (UDF) is working day and night strategising on how to bounce back into government. The party’s political strategies obviously involve the polishing up of its Constitution, manifesto and the much difficult task of organising a convention where its torchbearers will be elected.
UDF in my view is justified to spend time in strategising for 2014 elections considering that it is one of the major parties which went into the 2009 general elections without a presidential candidate after one Bakili Muluzi was rejected by the Electoral Commission less than two months before the general elections.
Courtesy of Muluzi’s machinations, the party was thus forced into an electoral alliance that was driven by different ideals and had very little time to be explained to the supporters of the two parties. It was not strange that after Muluzi took party supporters for granted by forming an alliance with the MCP, the UDF performed miserably in the elections.
This was despite the fact that the party had a record of achievements in democratic governance; observance of human rights, the ushering in of free primary education; liberalisation of the airwaves through the introduction of several radios, cellular networks, TV stations; the Masaf programmes, the several hospitals that were constructed, the several roads and infrastructure development programmes; among others.
As the party is busy strategising how to win the 2014 presidential elections, the same Muluzi through his son has thrown in some spanners in the works resulting in creations of divisions within the party.
Muluzi amazes me a lot. This is the guy who fought tooth and nail to change the country’s Constitution to provide for open presidential term. After hitting a blank wall, he never gave up, with the support of his minions he campaigned fearlessly for the infamous Third Term Bill. The unfortunate happened. Malawians through their legislators rejected Muluzi’s Third Terms bid.
Did he give up? Nay! If he had given up on his dream to rule beyond his term limit, he would have handed power to his vice or alternatively choose one of the founding members to succeed him. Instead of smooth succession, he opted for an outsider who in his assumption, believed would be docile and hence allowing him to be ruling for the third term through him.  The ploy was that after Mutharika first term, he would turn around and hand over power to Muluzi, an arrangement that has perfectly worked well for former Russian leader Vladimir Putin whose successor the current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said the current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should run for the top job in 2012.
Putin had already served two terms as president before  Medvedev took over in 2008.
But in the Malawi scenario, the game plan went haywire. Mutharika confounded his predecessor by becoming his own man.
Probably seething with emotions that his open term bid flopped, his third term bid failed, his attempt to rule through Mutharika became disastrous, his 2009 comeback hit a blank, Muluzi wants another comeback in a fashionable way; and this time it’s through his son Atupele who is copying the same old worn-out cliché “Kaya wina afune kaye asafune zinthu zisintha” which has just been rebranded through basic translation and called “Time for agenda for change.”
Strangely Muluzi’s comeback through Atupele has been welcomed without questions as to who really wants power. Is it Bakili Muluzi? Is it Atupele Muluzi? Or is it the same tenacious Bakili Muluzi through Atupele Muluzi?
I am asking these questions because I have serious doubts if Atupele who others at one point were doubting if he really holds a degree in law and has never worked elsewhere or run his own business except being embedded in his father’s businesses has the experience of solving the complex challenges facing the country.
I tend to agree with one commentator who observed that “presidency requires unbridled wisdom, intelligence, stature necessary for one to be a statesman and make decisions for over 14 million subjects and generations to come. “Atupele is only a lawyer and parliamentarian who walked from Saint Andrews to England and into parliament representing an ostensibly rural under developed Machinga North East constituency. He holds little attributes for the presidency besides his age.”
 According to that commentator, “Atupele has never been in cabinet except for some obscure membership of some parliamentary committee. He does not hold any working experience not even at corporate level and yet he thinks he can gun for the Presidency. He has no experience and wisdom for effective political or national leadership except his parliamentary responsibilities.”
He concludes by saying: “It thus makes it absurd that a person of tender age, questionable political credentials and poor experience can harbor ambitions for the highest office in the land. It will be asinine that Malawians allow him to play with their lives simply because they detaste the incumbent.”

The question is: Why is Atupele popular among some UDF supporters despite his inexperience and age? 

The answer is simple. UDF has some members who through strategic political positioning and others who through corruption, ethnicism and nepotism were beneficiaries of all the ‘great deals’ including contracts and handouts that were happening during Muluzi’s regime. In Chichewa, such people are called atidyenawo.  At the moment their assumption is that once Atupele bounces back into power they will resume enjoying the same trappings they were benefitting during Muluzi’s reign. The support for Atupele is for their pockets and stomachs and nothing else.

Despite parroting the axiom of agenda for change, which his dad also used, Atupele’s simply copy and paste truism seems to enjoy support because of good timing. His call for change is coming at the time when the country is embroiled in economic, political and governance crisis. The public expectation is that the major political parties will rise to the occasion and assure people that change is possible, but to their chagrin the major opposition parties are said to be busy strategising for the future.

As a matter of fact, it took the civil society leaders to mobilise the masses to press for change by holding mass protests and vigils when that would have been championed by opposition parties who are ‘governments in waiting’. It is, hence, not strange that Atupele’s copy and paste agenda for change pronounced at the time when the country is going through political, economic, diplomatic and governance turbulence has been welcomed with ululation and handclapping. In a crisis, any one who rises up to occasion and offer words of hope even if the suggested solutions are empty promises is endorsed and supported as a leader.

The point is UDF executive leaders were stuck in strategic myopia, busy planning and strategising at the time when masses wanted them to stand up and offer words of hope and alternative policies and solutions during the current political and economic crisis. They never did that and instead it was the inexperienced Atupele who did it.

In my view, it is a huge mistake for the UDF and all opposition parties to be telling their membership and the masses that they will unveil their torchbearers in 2013 or 2014, when people are anxiously waiting for alternative policies and solutions on fuel and forex crisis being offered by opposition leaders now.

People want a strong voice that becomes the face, the soul and the spirit of the UDF. If the UDF NEC assumes that such a move is tantamount to recreation of Big Man syndrome in the party, it should not be surprised if Atupele, despite being a conduit of Muluzi’s dynasty coupled with his lack of experience, continues to gain popularity. 

At the time when Muluzi want a comeback through Atupele or worse still create Muluzi dynasty, the UDF should abandon its plan to strategise for three years and hold a convention the soonest to identify new leaders, or else watch Atupele’s campaign spreading like wildfire while they are stuck to their strategy. Some call it strategic myopia, thus sticking to fixed strategies while losing lots of opportunities being seized by entrepreneurs and market oriented entities.

Mr Malawian President! Ignore dangerous advice

THE TWISTER

I still believe President Bingu wa Mutharika is a good leader capable of turning around the economy of the country and start re-writing new chapter on issues of human rights and governance; it seems the problem lies with his stooges who take pleasure in feeding him with noxious advice.

The recent negative publicity that has embroiled the presidency is due to nothing but venomous and half-baked admonitions from his stooges.

Let’s put this issue in context by illustrating it with a number of scenarios. Like every human being, the president gets angry over some issues; and the presidency being the highest office in the land when the office holder is bursting with emotions, you expect the advisors to intervene by moderating and cooling down his fury.

But if you ask me what do the stooges masquerading as advisors and strategists do? Instead of calming down the angry president so that a rational decision is arrived at and the president continues to enjoy huge respect he commands, the minions join the president in his anger, fuel it and pose as if they are angrier than the president himself. In their faked rage, they craft a vicious and treacherous decision which when executed would enrage the citizenry and in the process the president loses his popularity and respect.

I am writing this from experience having dealt with the presidency directly and indirectly. Last week for instance, I was reliably informed that the president was extremely angry with me over our coverage of the university graduation where this publication highlighted the murmuring that students made when the president was commenting on the issue of academic freedom.

During my conversation with one of the president’s aides I was also told that another story that pissed of the Ngwazi was the non-appearance of a barge at Nsanje Inland Port.

When the president gets angry over negative coverage of events, I feel for him because as a human being he is not immune to getting annoyed. In good political set-ups when the president gets emotional his handlers have an obligation to use anger management strategies to cool down him.

But what happens when the president is angry with a newspaper article and he is sharing his frustration with his advisors.

I assume this is how some of them react: “Bwana, this newspaper is ungrateful and it fails to appreciate your achievements, we will use every trick in the book by forcing government agencies, the police and even our legal minds to close their company,” one advisor would say.

Another would immediately jump up and say: “I think we immediately need to stop advertising in that publication. The paper has an arrogant editor called Twister. We need to teach them a bitter lesson.”

Another one would mull over it and declare: “Despite our intention are politically motivated, we can strategise and manoeuvre and use filthy trick like pressuring on their tax liabilities.

This is the pathetic state of political affairs in our land where advisors would sit and plot evil instead of giving sound advice.

In the event that the president’s image is in negative limelight in the media, what would have happened if the president had good advisors?

The minister of information and the presidential press officer and spokesperson would court the publishers and editors over lunch and discuss their concerns. This is the tactic that a number of leaders including US president Barack Obama uses time and again.

 Obama hosts luncheons with journos at White House and some of the previous  attendees included journalists from CNN, Washington Post, Newsweek and other media houses. Some of the luncheons were actually off-record.

Can the president get the same advice from his advisors who get angrier than him on his behalf. The answer is: “I doubt!” Instead of advising the president to meet publishers and editors, their insistence will be to ban advertisements or close down media houses.

Strangely the advisors deep down their hearts clearly know the backlash and the negative publicity that the president would suffer if his administration can make a mistake of closing a media house at the time we have assured the International Monetary Fund and other donors of our commitments to adhere to human rights issues including respect for press freedom.

I have a second scenario of how advisors mislead and create negative publicity for the president. Here we go. Government on October 14 issued a statement which read: “The government of the Republic of Malawi hereby revokes, reverses and withdraws any expulsion or deportation order that was, earlier this year, unfortunately made or issued against or in respect of His Excellency Mr Fergus Cochrane Dyet, the British High Commissioner to Malawi.

The statement added: “Accordingly, His Excellency Cochrane-Dyet is at liberty to enter Malawi at anytime on the instructions of Her Majesty’s Government or otherwise.”

As far as I am concerned this is one of the best statements on diplomacy and international cooperation, government has issued this year. The statement is clear and self-explanatory and it actually compliments the good foundation that Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mutharika and his delegation were laying in the United Kingdom during their meeting with William Hague and his company. 

Can you guess what one of the advisors did to spoil the well-calculated diplomatic game plan?

He rushed to the media and started making noise that Malawi has not apologized to Britain and Zambia. Surely after that powerful statement written in black and white; and after dispatching the Peter Mutharika delegation to London, did we need noisemakers to comment on the same issue?

Government tact demanded that the noisemakers should for a moment be silent and let the people interpret the government’s diplomatic statement the way they want. Pronto! But lo, the noisemakers were all over the media sending completely opposite signals, mocking the good spirits of government’s statements.

Let me conclude by imploring the president and his young brother to ignore venomous advice from some of his sympathizers including those of my cousins who come from what has been nicknamed as political PMCT zone, thus Phalombe, Mulanje, Chiradzulu and Thyolo zone. Not every piece of advice from PMCT Zone is useful.

I know how some of my uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and sisters from PMCT zone think politically they can bring chaos in the name of political patronage.

Long live democracy, long live press freedom.

Malawi needs solutions

Few weeks ago when President Bingu wa Mutharika’s hired the ‘lean’ cabinet following the dissolution of the previous bloated cabinet, we lauded him for demonstrating his strong desire to address the concerns raised by the masses through a petition which the civil society presented to government.

Besides trimming his cabinet, government’s attempts to normalize fuel supplies, the appointment of a Presidential Committee on Contact and Dialogue to negotiate with the civil society were some of the steps that formed the basis of our commendation. Like many citizens, we expected that the new cabinet would start addressing issues raised by the masses through the petition that the civil society submitted to government.

The citizenry, according to the petition, would like to see the repulsion of the infamous Section 46 of the Penal Code which empowers a cabinet minister to ban newspapers. They would also like government to stop draining tax-payers money through payments made to the First Lady as her remuneration for her charity. The other demand is that the Civil Procedures Bill popularly known as Injunction Bill, which is meant to prohibit the court from granting ex-parte injunctions against government should also be quashed. The heart of the matter is that President Bingu wa Mutharika and his administration still have a long list of concerns to address if their commitment to good governance and respect for the rule of law is to be appreciated by the masses.

Malawians had high hopes on the new cabinet ministers who we thought would at all cost refrain from misleading the president with shoddy advice on how he addresses people’s concerns. It seems were mistaken because some of the cabinet ministers are nothing but political liabilities who think that their duties revolves around churning out empty refutations and lies on trivia. It seems there is a crop of cabinet ministers who think that their job description is to be organizing press conferences on daily basis in the name of defending government through hollow refutations oftentimes bordering on castigating the opposition and the civil society.

Malawians do not want good-for-nothing ministers who waste their time ranting and raving instead of addressing the concerns that affect the majority of the people. If the ministers believe that they are endowed with great wisdom, then they should end the Chancellor College impasse which has seen students failing to attend classes for seven months now. Let them display their wisdom by ending the fuel and forex crises that are dogging the country, instead of boring people with senseless refutations and lies which even a kindergarten pupil can’t believe.

Let cabinet ministers tackle real issues that make a difference in the lives of Malawians instead of ranting and raving in the name of refutations on daily basis.

Malawi's lessons from Zambia: The fall of the president

TWISTER

BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

I am still following political events that are unfolding in Zambia with The Post Newspaper being my favourite source of information. As I penned this entry yesterday, I had just finished perusing a story on how Patriotic Front youths in Chipata had carried out a citizens’ arrest on fugitive Lusaka Province MMD chairperson William Banda and handed him over to the police.

Banda, who was with his family, was picked from a lodge and was found with three firearms, two pistols and a Greener shotgun.

The embattled Lusaka provincial governor was notoriously known in the entire Zambia for openly smoking out opposition figures, civil society officials and members of the media. His arrest has been described as a very good lesson to the entire country. It is lesson that when you are in the ruling party, you should not intimidate people because the things that you do will one day come back to you.

William Banda is not the only one who is now a victim of his political idiocy as his boss, Rupiah Banda, the trounced president is also swallowing bitter gall of foolhardiness. To appreciate this, Mike Mulongoti who at one point was Rupiah Banda’s spokesperson and later served as cabinet minister has a good explanation. According to Mulongoti, Rupiah goofed fulltime by surrounding himself with opportunists.

Mulongoti said it was unfortunate that Rupiah could not see through the lies of those who surrounded him and fooled him by assuring him that all was okay.

"This is what happens when you choose to ignore divergent views and choose what to hear only what you want to hear. Vultures and opportunists that surrounded Banda began to see through him and say things that he wanted to hear," Mulongoti was quoted by the paper as saying.

He has since branded Sata's election as timely, arguing greed and lack of respect for divergent views and advice led to former president’s downfall.

According to the former journalist turned politician, “Banda became intolerant, selfish and greedy in his rule. Banda also became disrespectful to colleagues who supported him into office. He even denied that those of us who were close to him had helped and that was part of the backlash.”

He added: "Banda and his colleagues became immune to advice. They became arrogant because of the power of incumbency and treated public resources like they were family resources. Those that advised them were perceived to be enemies of the state, such that even their friends in government were threatened that they would be dealt with through interaction with them."

Mulongoti’s remarks reminds me of what Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business  once observed about the pattern that dictators take when they are falling.

“The pattern repeats itself throughout history. The dictator eventually oversteps his bounds one time too many and the people revolt. Where once they cowered in fear, now they step up and declare, ‘enough is enough.’ The dictator must go.”

The professor adds: “And the dictator decides he better make some concessions to keep his ultimate power in place. Some demands of protestors are met, but the protests become more intense. Rather than pacify the people, the concessions embolden them. The dictator is uncertain, for the first time in a very long time, on what to do. One minute he is defiant, the next he is back to making concessions. He fires his cabinet, backs down from some of his more odious policies, but the protests mount.”

After those antics: “The dictator falls. And no one can remember how it was that the dictator could hold sway for so long. The fall was that abrupt.”

I am not sure who is the next dictator to fall but there are reports that in this continent there is a nation where the masses through various protests are chanting “Enough is enough. The dictator must go.”

Like all others dictators, the despot in that nation becomes defiant and threatens to smoke out his critics; but when he is confronted, he quickly makes concessions and calls for reconciliation only to become arrogant and defiant again after taking few tots of whiskey.

I am not sure whether the dictator’s party will survive in the country’s next polls, but the Zambia experience shows that even parties of the incumbents can be booted out of power.

Atupele: Malawi’s Obama?

A fortnight ago, I wrote on how dictators love to create dynasties in both autocracies and democracies. I cited the example of how Egyptian ousted leader Hosni Mubarak had a political blueprint in which he planned to handover power to his son Gamal, while Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi wanted to be succeeded by his son Saif.

I observed: “Even here in Malawi, the trends are the same. If you think I am lying, let someone challenge me, apart from being Muluzi’s son, what qualification, experience, track-record, political stamina does Atupele have to be harbouring presidential ambitions? What has he done as an individual that is worth pointing at that makes him qualify to be the next president? If he was just a mere MP, and not Muluzi’s son, could he be making noise about presidency?”

“The same questions go to Peter Mutharika. If he were not Bingu’s kid brother, would he be a politician harbouring presidential ambitions? I am not against Atupele and Peter’s ambitions, but sometimes we need to put trends and issues in their correct context. My assumption is that these two have found themselves on the presidential campaign trails because of their father and brother respectively just as Gamal and Saif are in hot soup because of their fathers.”

My arguments irritated my close friend who sent me an e-mail trashing my observation. He argued that Atupele Muluzi might end up being Malawi’s Barack Obama. Part of his email read: “Atupele Muluzi just like Duncan Phoya is a politician to watch. The so-called veteran politicians have nothing to offer apart from gossiping, engagement in mudslinging, making smoke-out threats and political greed.”

He added: “In my view if the old guards in UDF can just throw their weight behind Atupele and forge an alliance with another party, the UDF can bounce back into power. Atupele’s campaign strategies outsmart those of his father, those of old UDF guards and those of other parties. No mudslinging, no political violence, no arrogance just his vision and how he will achieve it.”

My response to my colleague was simple. “You are entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine.”