Chimunthu, Goodall speak on fall of veterans
Former speaker of Parliament Henry Chimunthu Banda has described as a blow to institutional memory, the increasing number of veteran members of Parliament (MPs) who have failed to make it back to Parliament.
This is the first time the eminent parliamentarian, who retired from politics last year after representing Nkhotakota North Constituency since 1999, was commenting on the fall of veterans a day after the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) released results of May 20 Tripartite Elections which were preceded by calls for new blood.
With the result sheet showing 139 newcomers and 53 retaining their seats, we asked him what the exit of experienced legislators who were found wanting in the eyes of voters mean on the legislative house.
While saying the trend is unsurprising and reflects the democratic choices of the electorate, Chimunthu Banda feared the influx of newcomers could be catalytic of grave drawbacks in administration of the House and handover of knowledge from one generation to another.
During the interview, he said: “High turnover has been a phenomenon for years and it has been getting higher and higher since the restoration of multiparty politics [in 1993].
“In terms of institutional memory, it is a challenge on the speaker to administer a house with a large number of newcomers because they have low understanding of parliamentary procedures and etiquette. Nonetheless, we must accept that this is democracy because it’s the electorate who chose who goes to Parliament or not.”
According to the former speaker, the number of veterans retaining their positions in the 193-seat legislature fell from 61 in 1999 to just 47 in 2009.
In 2009, Chimunthu Banda was elected chairperson of the 19-member Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
From that experience, the new arrivals stand to worsen the breakdown in institutional memory since the country has no institution of higher learning where aspiring MPs can pursue legislative studies as their counterparts in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.
Yet he hopes the return of “15 or so veterans who were voted out five or 10 years ago” will compensate for the experience the august House has heamorrhaged. In this group are Harry Thomson in Chikwawa North and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) vice-president Richard Msowoya in Karonga Nyungwe as well as former deputy speaker Esther Chilenje in Nsanje North.
Besides, parliamentary procedures require every group of MPs to undergo introductory training in standing orders, law making, debate and other procedures, he says.
Personifying the fallen veterans is former legislator Goodall Gondwe who held the positions of chief whip and leader of the House for the past 10 years.
In an interview, Gondwe said he was initially surprised that he was no longer an MP, but life has to continue “because nobody was born in Parliament”.
Said Gondwe: “In 2009, most veterans failed to make it and Parliament did not shut down. Obviously, we have lost experience, some of the things that were discussed, how some decisions were arrived at and how some problems were tackled. However, we have to live with the problems.”
He has been been replaced with PP newcomer Agness Nyalonje in Mzimba North Constituency.
Am not sure if the basis of this argument is valid unless we don’t have records of the proceedings in our parliament. The assumption here is that the only reliable source we have is the Oral Tradition which you cannot access in the archives and Library of Parliament…. “if we have one.” Instead of crying for Institutional Memory…, encourage the new MPs to do research…. do the analysis of the previous proceedings and come up with a better interpretation of the current events and life goes on. This is how we change institutions and implement new ideas for the betterment of mother Malawi. Are we crying because the new Parliament will not know how to shield section 65 of our constitution or what? Is it that there is no one to influence the new house to continue with the old bad habits? The majority of people voted in out parliament can read, write and do a research…, so id they love the country and want to see it develop they will do their research and contribute effectively in the proceedings of Parliament. Stop complaining about institutional memory as if we depend on Oral Tradition alone.
You have missed the point Chenene. The point is not that proceedings are documented, it is the mass change. No one can be in parliament roreever, but let us suppose all the old MPs do not go back, only new MPs in parliament, will they know where to start?
A conversation with Boy LUANAR
When it was written about cash gate at Bunda it
was easily swept under the carpet. I write this and expect, “you” the decision
makers to do the same. Actually, you will be busy discrediting the source of
this communique than finding out if it highlights reality. However, I will have
cleared my conscious. I love talking to you my wife. Yes my loved village lady
NyaBunda. If products rebrand my wife has decided to change to LUANAR-yes
following my surname.
I will die a sad person if the world still lives
with the lie often told and becoming the truth, yes, that students at Bunda
fail because there are lazy, dull and you name it. We don’t fail entirely and
grossly on those grounds. We fail because we were recruited to fail. I will not
be shocked to learn that my cohort will have many ‘sacrificial lambs’. Yes,
sacrificial lambs, since we fail because management has failed us by not
providing a conducive learning environment.
We still have challenges. We still have a long
way to go. Yes, as much as we have been good at critiquing our political
leaders for not pushing through the right leadership to make Malawi a better
place for us all. We have also ignored how bad we are at managing even an institution
as young and tender as LUANAR. One wonders, if we can even claim to manage a
ministry late alone a constituency- I am not shocked that our own
academician-Prof Peter Mwanza failed this litmus test big time.
The current state of affairs at Lilongwe
University of Agriculture and Natural Resources –LUANAR as is commonly called
is deplorable. The so called World Class University has compromised so much on
the education quality at tertiary level. It is only at LUANAR where learning
from a lecture is not different from listening to a politician campaign at
Masintha Ground. How do students get the opportunity to interact, pose critique
and dialogue with the lecture in a marque or hall that has 500 students? I mean
without any enabling technology to enhance this? The money that Big Kahuna but
short spent global trotting to learn how universities have transformed should
have partly been used to procure this. You are smiling. Even you and your accomplices
have failed to be prudent in using the money LUANAR got. You are shocked!!!!
You bought TX, you bought Chevrolets and expensive phones for yourselves. We
know as students. Actually I know this better than you thought.
Back to Bunda-LUANAR transition. My narrow
opinion is that the university engaged an over speed to have more students and
yet leave issues to do with classrooms, library space and library materials
remain as they were when 250 students were being recruited per annum. Perhaps you
assumed that in the long-run we will all die. Kkkkk!!!! Darling LUANAR.
This ridiculous, in consideration that now we are
over 1000 students joining the institution. I was almost missing out the issues
of accommodation. This ego of pushing for an institution to get the accolade
that it does not deserve for the sake of creating position which will enrich us,
has failed LUANAR. Rushing to become a university for the sake of having the
posts of Vice Chancellor and associated wailers is wrong. The retired and yet
stuck around Big Kahuna goofed here. Yes you. The one who thought you would
jump the road from P to VC. Hahaha!!!!
Only God is in control of tomorrow. Be nice to people on the way up your
ladder. Since you left, my lecture comes fresh in class because he did not
overstay in the meeting last night.
Let us talk about where I sleep. It is pathetic
when you examine the issue of accommodation. Lectures who pay a meagre MK12,
000 as rent for the undervalued institution houses are netting over MK120, 000
from their servants quarters by housing students. If you ask me that do you I a
problem with that? I vehemently say yes. First being that this it is immoral in
the spirit of helping out on the problem. Second is the issue of sanitation of
the place where students are calling a hostel (sleeping). It is only by His
Grace that these makeshifts have not caused cholera. Wait until an electrical fault
happens in the makeshifts. It will be in the front page-LUANAR staff doing
illegal expansions of institutional houses and electricity. How do you explain
the scenario where 6 students sleep in a 3m by 4m room, and 12 students sharing
a toilet and bathroom? The situation is even cumbersome when you come to think
of a state that two of the six students have to work in the night for their
assignment due the next morning. This is pathetic.
Turning to the issue of lectures accommodation; I
stand to be informed and collected, but in Malawi I think it is only at LUANAR
where people retire and still cling onto institution houses for more than 1 year.
They claim to be on contract and yet teach just a class in a semester-bwana VC
are these not dispensable but young, intelligent and energetic Drs we have in Malawi
and some busy driving taxis in UK?
I ooze from the eyes, when I come to think
through that those doing the dirty work (young and newly recruited lecturers-who
mostly don’t have vehicles are teaching more classes, supervising students and
engaged in research). These are made to operate from town to teach a 7
am class and wait until 7:00pm to get home (meaning they leave there homes before
5:30-most often on empty stomach and having worked up at 4:30am to get prepared-
having less time to prepare for teaching, let alone conduct research and
supervise students). I feel that the retirees are well connected and defended
by your system and management which uses very lame excuses. A critical scooping
to the excuses put forward on this, exposes your appeasement and fear of
shaking up friends (politburo of your management and stay here. Hahaha!!! One Gwengwe
would say party potiburo) at the expense of morality of administration.
Not only are these people stuck to institutional houses, there are on the
contrary to university policy, appointed deans, heads of department and cling
to offices which they refuse to share with other lecturers on the pretext that
there are junior. LUANAR is becoming a very unfair institution on this, we see
support staff retire and made to pack within a month. But we still have ‘them’
retire, wine and dine on their pension get stranded of where to go and stick
around for contracts. In fact as a student I would say let them do this while
operating from town or their retirement base.
As this is not enough, we have a retired-chief
kahuna himself-(yes one mbuya who is now smiling after passing through May, 20),
who is has two institutional houses appended to his name. I thought we could
embrace the examples our state presidents present to us. Yes they vacate state
houses on time. Just as you left the office at that hostel you should have left
the house located at that pot holed corner. Actually we ought to lead by example
since most of these politicians are our students. Why should you drag the
institution to redesign a lecture house to your accord and to befit your old
status? But why? This is bad considering that you retired and you were not
entitled to an institutional house upon jumping the river from permanent staff
member to a retiree on contract. Moya Moya Moya kuvuta iwe.
I am perplexed as to what you discuss when you
meet in your staff, departmental, senate and university management meetings. Do
you meet to make choices on which posh car to drive through university finances?
Do you meet to recruit chauffer’s when our laboratories are starved with
inadequate staff, apparatuses and chairs?
I am forced to conclude that LUANAR has lost it
direction. I recommend that we have a serious reflection on the way to do
things. I conclude that we have the money to do a progressive work but our priorities
are on self-gratification rather than making a difference on LUANAR. Tell me if
the money that was used to procure your posh cars would not have sufficed to build
a girls hostel with 30 rooms. Tell me if the wage bill that has come because of
making the institution top heaven would not have been adequate to have a
technician on GIS and teaching assistants for Mathematics in year one. I also
conclude and recommend that the retirees vacate the institutional houses
without any lag (hahaha darling ASAP). To be radical, we can borrow a leaf from
Mzuzu University model. Let all teaching staff vacate the institutional houses
and turn them to offices and hostels (I know you will nod that this is my
weakest argument and you would use this to woo non retirees not to see the merit
in my argument. Do what it pleases you, everone is watching).
I was going to let you get a slumber tonight without
highlighting on the laxity in that office which supposed to provide us with
results of our hard-work. It compromises on the preparation we must do before
we get to sit for our midsem exams. It is one office with an officer that remains
far from being trainable. Yes, he will always blame others for not doing his
job. Yet you still keep him in your armpits. Do you need an injunction from Kalekeni
Kaphale and Frank Mbeta to release our results on time? Or you need Kenyatta
Mkandawire. My wife LUANAR.
Put your house in-order and we shall shake hands.
We shall not ankhoswe- Ministry of education to council us. Mbumba ya uncle GY
take heed. We shall know that you are here for a purpose. Indabas in the name
of taskforces to follow up on issues raised in this will not solve the problem.
Actually most of the things which you institute taskforces on are way vivid by
a naked eyes-you just buy time and scratch on the problem. No need for a
microscope called-taskforce on why students failed last academic year. Just walk
from the Library to the hall through the corridor that produces pungent smell
from the toilets which lack VIM and OMO. You will see students learning while
standing. Yes, at a university. You will see the library almost breaking
because of being overloaded.
Muyakhenso iyi- (Anne Matumbi-2004)