Malawi: Of security and women assaults

Blantyre - Jan 20, 2012

The barbaric lawlessness which broke out in some parts of Lilongwe through the heartless stripping of women by some hoodlums has astonished me. It is only in a lawless and stateless nation like Somalia where such foolish and horrendous incidents can occur and even the sensible Somalis do not do it. I am wondering as to how such criminal and nefarious acts can occur in a nation like ours where our president boasts at podium that the police service has the best Inspector General in the name of Peter Mukhito.

The horrible part of the infamous gender violence are allegations that some civilian and uniformed police officers witnessed the incidents and never intervened timely as expected of patriotic law enforcers who are mentored and inspired by the best IG the country has ever had.

Following this incident, I question Mutharika’s rationale for boasting on the podium that Mukhito is the best policeman and inspector general the country has ever had. I have serious reservations with Mukhito’s so-called outstanding performance which Mutharika praises when others think otherwise for a number of reasons. Mukhito and his officers have to date miserably failed to trace and arrest machete-wielding youths who like terrorists used DPP vehicles on July 19 ahead of July 20 peaceful civilian protests to intimidate the citizenry as they criss-crossed the streets of Blantyre.

Another incident that baffles me is the news that Mukhito was meeting the Polytechnic slain student late Robert Chasowa. Up to date, Mukhito and his commissioners have not briefed the nation what his Criminal Investigations Department found in relation to the death of the deceased student.

That’s not the end of the story on my serious reservations with the so-called finest Inspector General of Police. The latest study by Transparency International has just revealed that Mukhito heads the most corrupt institution in the country. I am not sure whether one can take credit for that.

I still doubt how he can best be described as the finest police officer in the land when under his tenure as police boss, his officers miserably failed to control protesting vendors in the capital city of the land where even the police headquarters itself is located. Thanks to our patriotic members of the Malawi Defence Force who actually intervened and restored order of the city.

Surely, should the president be calling Mukhito the finest police chief when during his tenure women are being stripped in the streets in broad-daylight? I have my reservations.

How I wish the IG had a system of gathering intelligence within the police service! I am thinking this aloud because if he had that system, he would have discovered that most of his juniors are so bitter with him for forcing them to return the allowance they received after working tirelessly during the July 20 and 21 demonstrations. The Twister has just heard from the rumour mill that the police are so highly demotivated because of the order that those who pocketed the ‘July 20’ fat allowances should return them on a willy-nilly basis. I am not surprised by their sloppy response of the demotivated police officers.  

My advice to Mukhito: Let him ask those in administration department on how to do soul searching within the service using the basic but important three analytical tools of PESTLE, SWOT and GAP. After those analyses and implementation of how to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities and filling the gaps, I will salute him as our finest IG.

Debts our children will pay

Despite their fine credentials, I don’t admire former Finance Minister Ken Kandodo and his successor Ken Lipenga because I know they have to defend government policy even if they are not comfortable with it. Actually, when being inaugurated as cabinet ministers, they take oath of allegiance by pledging their support and loyalty to the incumbent president and our motherland.

I don’t admire Ken because his position as finance minister demands him to defend the zero-deficit budget regardless of all its well-known flops and repercussions.

When the budget had just been passed I had no kind words for Ken because I shared the view of the other critics that the zero deficit budget would end up as a failed experiment.

I recall one economist rubbished my argument on my fears on domestic borrowing charging it is an important part of fiscal policy and management of aggregate demand in any economy. His argument was that in any economy even in developed nations, when the government is running a budget deficit, it has to borrow money through the issue of debt instruments such as Treasury Bills and long-term government bonds. Such borrowing in his opinion is okay because the emergence of a rising budget deficit due to a weakening economy on one hand means government spending on priority areas such as health, education, transport and agriculture on the other hand.

I argued and still maintain my stand that local borrowing defeats the concept of zero-based budget because it is crowding out the private sector through high taxes, inflation and forex shortages. In that scenario, the description that the budget is pro-development and pro-poor is a fallacy.

On the punitive taxes, my argument has remained that our economy is at the stage where the resource base is so narrow hence overtaxing institutions and people is counterproductive. The same simple argument remains, thus if you want to milk the cow, you need to feed it. In this case, the government is heavily taxing people and businesses which are the source of growth forcing some of them to retrench and even close down. The question is: How do you expect growth from a thin animal, which is being over-milked through punitive taxes?

I now weep for our economy because the harsh reality of our goofs has caught up with us. Despite the huge taxes the revenue authority is milking from us and various institutions, government is slipping into deficits, which it is attempting to tame by resorting to borrowing both domestically and internationally. The consequence of heavy domestic borrowing is the crowding out of private sector in the debt capital market in short and medium term while in the long run, domestic borrowing would translate to even higher taxes as government will be hunting for money to repay that huge accumulated debt.

While Malawi was a beneficiary of debt cancellation few years ago, we have started accumulating debt. While locally, government issued K30 billion worthy of bonds in the market, the country has secured a US$200 million debt from international lenders. If you think, thus the only money our children and their children will repay, you are mistaken because, there is also over US$800 million debt which the country had at the end of last year. If you ask me, I still have doubts if the US$200 million new foreign debt will steady the economy when every month this country is required to spend US$30 million on fuel alone; and this entails depleting almost half of that debt on fuel in three months.

What this means is that our economic woes are far from over and our craving for premature economic independence through experiments such as zero deficit budget will result in the suffering of Malawians.

I know government has problems with some of the prescriptions from IMF, but at the stage we are, we need support from many partners. One of the issues we collided with IMF was on the issue of the value of the Kwacha. President Bingu wa Mutharika has been arguing that if Kwacha is devalued the prices of goods and services will go up. But have prices of goods and services failed to go up because an overvalued Kwacha. Check the table on how prices of goods have defied Mutharika’s assumptions.

Malawi: Politics and speed of implementation

BLANTYRE – January 13, 2012:

I am following with keen interest the wrangles in the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) because in my view, there are four parties that have high chances of winning the 2014 presidential elections. The parties are the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, the Malawi Congress Party, the People’s Party and the UDF. My biased opinion is based on the structures these parties have at the grass-root level. Since I consider the UDF to be one of the major parties, I take interest in their wrangles.

As the two factions are battling it out for supremacy and leadership, this week I reflected on one statement from the Friday Jumbe faction.

It reads in part: “The fighting you are witnessing is not personal as some people would like us to believe. It is not a fight between UDF and Atupele Muluzi or between UDF and Dr George Mtafu or between UDF and Kennedy Makwangwala.

“The fight is higher and nobler than that. It is a fight about principles. You are witnessing a fight between selfishness and selflessness, between hero worship and human dignity, between individualism and collectivism, between authoritarianism and democracy, between anarchy and order, between lawlessness and legality – and above all between politics of exclusion and politics of inclusion.”

The powerful statement adds: “Where we are trying to give every member of the UDF an equal opportunity to have a shot at leadership, you will see them doing everything possible to turn UDF into a personal enterprise that serves the interests of one single family, one tribe.”

I regarded the statement as powerful because it sums up the dirty and nepotistic politics practised on this continent. This is a continent where leaders do all they can to surrender power to their sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, cousins or their handpicked minions. Strangely, when the handpicked sons and brothers or surrogates are introduced as presidential candidates, bootlickers and hero worshippers come in abundance. What baffles me is that some of the bootlickers are highly educated politicians, who elsewhere would have been opposing the nepotistic and dynastic succession plan.

Examples on nepotistic and dynastic succession on the continent are numerous. It is claimed Egyptian ousted leader Hosni Mubarak groomed his son Gamal to be his successor while Muammar Gaddafi wanted to be succeeded by his son Saif.

Even here in Malawi, the trends are the same. If all goes by their plans, Peter Mutharika might succeed his brother Bingu and Atupele might snatch the UDF leadership from Muluzi’s successor Friday Jumbe.

Whilst people hate nepotism, tribalism, dynasities, personalisation of political parties, I have observed with eagerness how do handpicked bloody minions of those in power manage to succeed their fathers, brothers, uncles and relations.

The Twister believes several factors are exploited and used to the fullest to achieve the disgusting and detested succession deals which paradoxically get supported. Politics of financial favours and handouts, nepotism buttered with tribalism and speed of implementation are some key strategies that are used.

Those who support the bloody relations of presidents are great beneficiaries; and hate the idea of losing their lucrative contracts or handouts if they oppose dynastic succession. Handouts become in form of multi-million contracts for the politicians’ business allies or even mere K50s, which women dancers get.

The nefariousness of nepotism buttered with tribalism is well known and this is why the UDF statement talks about “politics of regionalism and tribalism.” Some politicians have even formed tribal groupings to consolidate their grip on power.

 Let me wind up by commenting on the third factor which is speed of implementation.  In my view, the handpicked surrogates easily beat the principled and well experienced rivals because of speed of implementation.

Take it or leave it, the fact remains that Peter Mutharika has been speedily and extensively marketed even before his rivals within the DPP have identified their candidate to challenge him. Likewise, if you ask the Jumbe camp, who will be their presidential candidate, you will not get a straight forward answer. Instead you will be offered a lecture on party rules, regulations and policies, the eligibility criteria, the convention and the need to follow all principles and procedures in identifying the presidential candidate. Ask the same question to the other camp, the answer will be automatic – Atupele Muluzi.  The trick lies in the speed of implementation strategy.

One blogger Richard Wilson wrote “increasing your speed of implementation means making decisions faster, receiving feedback faster, and adjusting and growing further more rapidly as well.

“With everything in life we move through learning curves whether it is starting a new career, starting a new business, or launching a new product.  Speed of implementation is about moving up that learning curve 3x faster than your competition.”

Wilson adds: “In short you can evolve faster, meet your goals sooner, and over a short period of time out-pace everyone around you in your industry by just taking massive action.”

I find Wilson’s argument plausible because while the Jumbe camp are right in their observation about principles, selflessness, collectivism, legality and democracy, Atupele despite ignoring party rules and even flouting the UDF constitution will draw most supporters to his side because of launching his campaign early. Democracy is about numbers and Atupele’s numbers might prevail over Jumbe’s adherence to principles and rule of law.

One of my mentors at University of Malawi’s Management Development Centre once said: “If there’s anything that matters most for entrepreneurs, it’s getting things done and getting them done fast.” I believe in political entrepreneurship, the rule is the same.

If you ask today who will be our next president, the names that are mentioned are those of Joyce Banda, Henry Phoya, Atupele Muluzi, Peter Mutharika, courtesy of speed of implementation tactic. Never be surprised in 2014 if one of them becomes our head of state, unless other powerful gurus in our society team up and devise a powerful strategy which can overtake the early campaigners.

Economic jokes

I recently took an interest to check the type of schools, which are sending most students to our national universities. Figures for the past three years revealed that most students who are qualifying for university studies are from national secondary schools , then those from private secondary schools and high schools.

Most district secondary schools and community day secondary schools send few students to the public universities. The reasons for such trends are well known and they include availability of well qualified teachers and well-resourced facilities in national secondary schools, private secondary schools and high schools.

The facilities in most district and community day secondary schools are inferior when compared to those of national secondary schools, academies and high schools, hence this is even reflected in the MSCE results and the number of students these different categories of institutions send to universities.

Guess my concern? While in government boarding secondary schools each pupil pays about  K10,000 per term or K30,000 per year and at private secondary schools each student pays about K50,000 per term or K150,000 per year while  in high schools and academies, the fees range from K100,000 per term to K500,000; strange development happens when the students qualify for studies at public universities.

All of a sudden a student from a government national secondary school whose parents were paying K30,000 becomes poverty-stricken that they have to queue for a loan of K25,000 from Malawi Savings Bank.  Even students who qualified for the university after studying at private secondary schools where their parents were paying K150,000 as fees for three terms line up for loans. There are even those whose parents were paying K500,000 per term in high school who also queue for K25,000 loans for university education.

I don’t know where else in the world do students who used to pay secondary schools fees pegged at either K30,000 or K150,000 per year fail to pay K25,000 for their university studies; and have to stage strikes over loan schemes. In Malawi, this is not just a joke of our time, but reality on the ground.  

Is this the only joke in the country? Nay! Go into some of these shops and find out the stuff we are wasting our forex on? Sometimes, I wonder why we grow lots of tobacco and whine at low prices at auction floors where we sell the raw leaf? I thought the best cigarettes and cigars in the world would have been manufactured here in Malawi, since we have the raw materials in abundance and all we need is tangible investment. 

Malawi: The tale of devaluation

TWISTER 

BY BRIAN LIGOMEKA

The arrogance of those in power has borne so many sour fruits such as retrenchments, companies’ closure, the soaring unemployment, the rising prices of goods and services, as well as acute forex and fuel shortages. If you are wondering about the arrogance I am referring to, as far as I am concerned besides the expulsion of the British top diplomat to Malawi, another act of arrogance was the conducting of an experiment called zero-deficit budget, a term I have even questioned because in my economics class I learnt about zero-based budgeting and nothing about this concept called zero-deficit budget.

The outcome of the experiment called zero deficit budget is a disaster as it has backfired with all sorts of repercussions. The sight of fuel queues snaking hundreds of metres on various roads that lead to filling stations and women sleeping at Admarc depots waiting for subsidised fertilisers give a very realistic reflection of how the experiment called zero-deficit budget has boomeranged and should be abandoned.

The arrogance that lead to those in authority to over-value the economic and political resilience of this country just because they have been blinded by power after their personal finances improved tremendously within few years - far beyond their earned income, and thought the country does need donors including having a programme with International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not helped matters.

I don’t understand why we have been refusing to devalue our currency and revise our growth targets as advised by the IMF when currency devaluation is not a new phenomenon. Some literature by the Reserve Bank of Malawi clearly explains that the country has been devaluing its currency over the years and the management of exchange rate in Malawi has been pursued with some major policy objectives in mind. The policies include: attainment of growth in real income; maintenance of a viable balance of payments position; and attainment of stable domestic prices.

It is on record that the use of the exchange rate as an instrument of monetary policy began as early as 1965 when the Reserve Bank of Malawi became fully operational. Soon after attaining self rule from Britain in 1964, Malawi introduced its own currency. For some years soon after independence, the Malawi currency was pegged at par to the British pound sterling and this continued until November 1973.

 One paper by the central bank says between1965-1973, the Malawi currency moved in tandem with movements in the British sterling, such that when the latter was devalued by some 14 percent in November 1967, the Malawi pound was also devalued by the same magnitude.

History has it that from 1973, Malawi authorities responded to the movements in the international currencies by de-linking the Malawi kwacha from the British pound, and pegging it to a trade-weighted basket of the British pound and the US dollar. In this system, the Reserve Bank fixed the exchange rate by setting daily buying and selling rates for the US dollar and the British pound in the light of foreign exchange market developments.

Those who have seen many rains can recall that around 1980s, the country’s economy faced several shocks, which resulted largely from weak external demand for the country's primary products in world markets. Guess what Dr Kamuzu Banda’s regime did in response to the crisis. In April 1982, the kwacha was  devalued by 15 percent. This was followed by another devaluation of 12 percent in September 1983.

That was not the end of devaluations. New challenges affected Malawi economy as the conflict in Mozambique between ruling Frelimo and opposition Renamo disrupted Malawi’s traditional transport routes to the maritime ports of Beira and Nacala. From 1984, Malawi had to rely on long overland routes to the ports of Durban in South Africa and Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, a change which significantly increased the country's transportation costs thus (Cost, Insurance and Freight) and/ Free on Board margin from only 22 percent in the 1970s to over 40 percent since 1984. This development of using South African and Tanzanian seaports for exports worsened the country's terms of trade. In response to that scenario, Kamuzu administration resorted to active exchange rate changes which saw the kwacha being devalued by 15 percent in April 1985 and a  year later it was devalued by 10 percent.

The trend continued with further devaluations of 20 percent in February 1987 and another depreciation of 15 percent in January 1988. Kamuzu administration never stopped on that note as the currency was devalued by 7 percent in1990; and twice in 1992, by 15 percent in March and by 22 percent in percent in July..

Come February 1994, the foreign exchange market was completely liberalized and the kwacha was allowed to float freely. Government’s move was aimed at improving the country's export competitiveness, providing an efficient foreign exchange allocation mechanism; dampening speculative attacks on the kwacha; and restoration of both investor and donor confidence; among other objectives.

The foreign exchange market liberalization resulted in the authorisation of dealer banks to buy and sell foreign exchange at freely determined market exchange rates; and foreign exchange bureaus were authorized to engage in spot transactions with the general public on the basis of exchange rates arrived at with their clients among other developments

The benefits of a liberalised foreign exchange regime are well chronicled. The floating currency ensures that movements of the exchange rate are in line with the market forces of demand for and supply of foreign exchange. In this case, the foreign exchange value of the domestic currency settles at a price, which equates the quantity of foreign exchange demanded to the quantity supplied.

It should be noted that when authorities floated the kwacha in February 1994, the currency immediately plummeted, from its level of K6.70 per US$1 to K9.88 per US$1. By end-November of 1994, the kwacha had depreciated in nominal terms by over 290 percent against the US dollar; 300 percent against the British pound; 279 percent against the South African rand; and 335 percent against the German mark, reflecting spending overruns which led to loss of confidence in the kwacha. Initially, such massive depreciations were viewed as excessive. In fact the general consensus was that the depreciation was more than what was implied by the economic fundamentals.

While those massive devaluations were shocking, but the advantage on the ground was that  forex was readily available and there were no fuel queues in Malawi. Between 1995 to 1997 the kwacha was stable and was slightly devalued in 1997.

As were the trends in the past, there were some devaluations and thus from August 1998 to December 1999, the nominal exchange value of the kwacha ranged between K42 to a US dollar and K46. The trend of devaluations continued during the rest of Bakili Muluzi’s regime just as was the case during Kamuzu’s regime.

I have cited all these figures and trends because the administration of President Bingu wa Mutharika treats the issue of devaluation as a strange phenomenon to the extent that one of the issues that led Malawi’s programme with IMF is the issue of the value of the Kwacha.

While some economists look at benefits of devaluation such as competitiveness of exports, which provides a boost for domestic demand and leads to an improvement in the current account deficit, Mutharika looks at devaluation as a ‘dangerous economic animal’ which will trigger inflation.

Mutharika was once quoted: “I have resisted devaluation and will continue to resist devaluation because I need to give the business community and everybody in Malawi a stable foreign exchange regime. I am an economist and I understand and follow what is happening around the world. I am not going to devalue the kwacha to please one or two people.”

Mutharika’s monetarism thinking tends to ignore the fact monetary policies do not exist in a vacuum but in a macro-economic environment. The question is: With the rising prices of goods, forex and fuel shortages coupled with our diplomatic gaffes, are we benefiting anything from an over-valued Kwacha?

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.”