Donors’ resolve to halt budgetary support isn’t necessarily a direct response to the looting at Capital Hill.
If the act of looting was the cause, the donors could not have done that on Thursday last week. They could have dropped the bomb a month ago—just days after the cash-gate movie began to unroll.
The wait, to me, was actually an observation period. They perhaps wanted to gauge Mrs Joyce Banda’s resolve in responding to the looting.
That is why the announcement on Thursday was a potent show of loss of confidence not necessarily in government’s failure to prevent the looting. Rather, in government’s embarrassing failure to respond constructively to looting.
Unfortunately, it is not just donors who feel that way. The list of those who share the feeling is endless. There is general feeling that Mrs Banda’s response has been suspiciously too casual right from the beggining. And there are good reasons.
One, Mrs Banda’s first reaction to what would, with days, be the worst corruption scandal in decade was propaganda. By narrowing Paul Mphwiyo’s shooting to his alleged fight against corruption, Mrs Banda was trying to create an angel in Mphwiyo—a tactic to divert the public from knowing the pricking cash gate truth in the offing. But truth, like pregnancy, cannot be hidden for long.
Two, after the cash gate movie unraveled and the arrests spree unleashed, Mrs Banda’s baring fangs to the two Cabinet ministers was, to me, a drop in the ocean of questions. There was hardly an explanation as to why the two were fired. What happened to transparency and accountability? The failure to explain the firing spoke volumes of hidden truths.
Three, there is an inbuilt bureaucratic government structure which governs public finances in the country. And there are controlling officers whom not an inch of a cheque is issued or signed without their approval. We understand that we have the Secretary to Treasury, we have the Accountant General, and we have the Reserve Bank governor and all that. I am surprised that we are yet to hear the role of these influential controlling officers in the cash gate. I am not saying they were involved. I am saying how could all this cash go out of the house which they keep its keys?
Four, there is a question of a senior party official implicated in the cash gate, Mr Oswald Lutepo. I understand he is arrested. But picture this: the party says it deems all its members innocent until proven guilty.
But what is the wisdom of not suspending a senior party official implicated in a serious corruption scam? Have we forgotten how Henry Chibwana, former PP general secretary, was hastely fired for making remarks, just remarks, that their impact is not grave than the corruption case which Lutepo is implicated in?
Beyond that, Lutepo was on the wanted list of Interpol. How come he managed to pass through all the airports and corridors and highways and hand himself to police?
Five, how Mrs Banda has continued business-as-usual politics in the face of a nation dying due to the cash gate is quite surprising. Hospitals have run out of drugs and innocent Malawians are dying. Yet the President continues to spend millions on trivia like elevating chiefs and distributing cows. Can’t she save the little millions for the hospitals?
Six, Paul Mphwiyo, the man who holds the truth to the cash gate, is still in South Africa. Surely, the sooner this guy is in town, the better for the truth to come out. To me, he is quite central. We need to know who shot him and why. But why is he still in South Africa?
Unarguably, I am quite sure Mrs Banda’s response to the cash gate, though amidst reports of continued arrest, Ralph Kasambara being one of it, I am still skeptical of the whole drama.
The entire things bring a lot of de ja vu. We had a number of arrests during the K187 million scam. We saw a number of them during the Admarc scam which saw Peter Mulamba, a key witness, going fugitive. We saw a number of arrests during Bakili Muluzi’s K1.7 billion case.
But nothing is amounting to something substantial. All these people are still going scot-free, and again, they are still at the heart of the country politics.
We cannot trust Parliament in this cash gate. They are part of the problem. That is why we need the civil society, now, to move beyond issuing statements. TAKE US TO THE PRESIDENT PLEASE! WE DEMAND HER EXPLANATION!
