A Cabinet that only trickles

There is a bad joke making rounds in our newsroom and it began the day President Peter Mutharika appointed Goodall Gondwe as Finance and Economic Planning Minister on June 6.

It goes something like the President is taking all the time in the world to appoint his Cabinet such that he needs more than four days just to settle on one name, hence the appointment of Gondwe that day.

When I heard the midnight appointment of nine more Cabinet ministers on Thursday morning (I was asleep during the midnight of Wednesday when it was done), I remembered about the joke and once more had a hearty laughter.

But let us put jokes and laughter aside. This is serious business and the President better be.

By delaying the Cabinet and then appointing it in the trickled manner he is doing because of exigencies of circumstances, the President is projecting an image of a leader who is desperately amateurish.

It is clear from the time and manner in which the appointments were made that the President did not have a free hand but was rather coerced by the forced adjournment of Parliament on Wednesday due to the absence of Cabinet ministers to take up the front bench of the government side as well as seats in the Business Committee of the House to decide on matters to be debated in the Chamber.

But the President opened the 45th Session of the House on Tuesday. Did he think in his wildest of guesses that Parliament would operate without a Cabinet? Can that happen and why should it happen? Parliament is there to hold gover-nment to account? Who was going to account to MPs, our represe-ntatives?

It is easy for the government spin doctors (If they have them although I don’t see any at the moment) to dismiss this gaffe as non consequential but happening early in his presidency, in a country of 13 million-plus people, it gives the impression of a president spending more time on peripheral matters rather than on issues that are important to Malawians.

And, yes, it gives ammu-nition and verve to the Jessie Kabwilas of this world who said the other day that the President needed to give us an announcement of a Cabinet and not his wedding to Gertrude Maseko as he did last week.

And talking of wedding, why the speed? Yes, the President is entitled to a wife just like the rest of us. Yes, the President needs a consort on his side all the time. It projects an image of stability.

But why so much hurry that rules had to be bent in the CCAP where the President is to wed today just to ensure that it is done as quickly as possible?

Not that this private issue means so much to some of us but when somehow it looks like it is making the President to lose concentration on his main employment, it should be a cause of concern to Malawians.

Malawians deserve nothing better than a decisive leader who does things on time and projects an image of a captain in control of the ship.

So far this President has not projected this image and Malawians are left to speculate why he is delaying to appoint a full 20-member Cabinet he promised them. Is he trying to include the opposition or independent MPs? Are they snubbing him hence the delay?

Just what is going on for the Cabinet to come in trickles and not in buckets and then take ages to come?