Behind APM’s reforms axe

Vice-President Saulos Chilima presented two options to President Peter Mutharika when the Public Service Reforms Commission’s (PSRC) mandate expired in June 2016.

The two choices were that either the reforms revert to the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) or Mutharika should extend the commission’s mandate for another year, according to sources from OPC, State House and a commissioner.

Chilima made the proposal to the President on July 19 2016 following the commission’s expiry of its mandate on June 20 the same year.

Mutharika, we have established, chose to extend the commission’s tenure for just a further six months instead of the Vice-President’s one year suggestion.

The commission’s dissolution has also come a month earlier than expected.

Whereas Minister of Information and Communications Technology Nicholas Dausi told The Nation on Tuesday that the mandate of the PSRC expired on December 31 2016, we established that the commission’s tenure was extended up to end this month.

To substantiate the fact that the commission’s mandate was extended to January 31 2017 and not December 31 2016 as put by Dausi, another source indicated that the PSRC was set to meet Southern Region-based parastatals in Blantyre in the course of this month before finalising its exit reports.

It was an abrupt closure that has shocked many people, but was not surprising to some insiders and political observers who saw it coming.

“Why the abrupt change? Why revert to OPC when it was obvious that the OPC previously failed? The answers [to these questions] have political significance,” observed an OPC source with knowledge of the reforms power play.

The source said by relocating the reforms to the OPC, the President had also succumbed to numerous intelligence reports alleging that his Vice-President was using the reforms drive to gain political mileage and create parallel political structures.

The OPC source said the President was briefed and warned a long time ago that Chilima was becoming very popular and that the success of the reforms was politically undermining the President’s performance in other areas.

Political analysts also view the annexation of the reforms agenda from the Vice-President as a decision that shows lack of political will to see them succeed.

Yesterday, political analyst Boniface Dulani told The Nation that it was obvious from the onset that the reforms were destined to fail because there was no political will from the President, most politicians in the governing DPP and some top civil servants.

He said: “Not everyone was happy with the reforms. There was a tug of war between those who wanted the reforms and the powerful. The powerful have won because they are the beneficiaries of the status quo.”

One source close to the reforms unit said it was surprising that the reforms were sent back to the OPC when all study tours that the commission undertook discovered that the reforms in many countries are under some ‘high office’.

The commission visited countries such as Kenya, Namibia, Singapore and Scotland where public sector reforms are in the office of the prime minister.

“You need someone up there to drive these reforms. This is a tedious job that needs a dedicated driver that heads the high office. What has changed now is that there is no leadership to drive the reforms,” he observed.

At the time Mutharika was reverting the reforms to the OPC, PSRC had completed citizen and councils’ engagement programme.

From January 2017, the unit was set to start quarterly review programmes to assess progress of the pioneer ministries and parastatals.

Michael Jana, a University of Malawi lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at Chancellor College, wondered why the President was fixing something that was not broken.

He said: “The President’s move is quite surprising. Reforms were the only thing that was seen to be working in his government. Why changing now?

“Given the history of reforms what is it that would work better under the OPC that has not worked under the Vice-President. This move is surprising.”

In an earlier interview, one reforms commissioner confided in The Nation that he had knowledge that the Vice-President intended to quit the commission having been fed up with manoeuvres of “some individuals with crabbed minds who pray for the failure of the reforms while palpably oblivious of the fact that in so doing they are praying for the State President’s, and therefore, Malawi’s, failure to translate the main objective of the public service reforms into reality”.

The commissioner observed that the individuals appear to fear the VP that his success in fostering the implementation of the reforms would put him in a strong position of becoming a strong DPP presidential candidate for future general elections.

Another commissioner, who opted for anonymity, corroborated the sentiments, saying to put a “crack” between the Vice-President and his boss, Mutharika, the individuals have been fabricating stories.

The change comes despite ratings of success in the two years the Vice-President was in charge as observed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Centre for Public Service Excellence (GCPSE).

“Since the launch of the PSRC Report, significant progress has been made by Public Sector Reform Management Unit [PSRMU] and other actions in defining the ‘what’ in greater detail, intended actions have been costed and potential funders—internally and externally—have been approached,” reads a UNDP GCPSE mission report for the meetings that took place between February 29 and March 11 2016 in Lilongwe.

The UNDP GCPSE mission report observed that since 1994, the essential contents of the much needed reforms in public service reform for Malawi have been repeatedly spelt out yet little lasting progress had occurred.

However, State House director of communications Bright Molande last night dismissed suggestions that the Vice-President has been removed.

He said Mutharika and Chilima have worked as a team and the Vice-President was acting in a delegated capacity.

Said Molande: “I doubt if the Vice-President himself would claim singular popularity given that he was acting in a delegated capacity. The reform ideas themselves were generated by various ministries, departments and agencies.” n