‘If you can’t change the people, change the people’

During a press briefing on Monday this week, President Lazarus Chakwera touched on the working relationship between the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), the Attorney General (AG) and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), which is said to be poor.

The President’s statement was, to say the least, reassuring on his resolve to wage war against corruption. Of late, the three offices have been in the headlines for wrong reasons. They are said to be fighting against each other instead of confronting one of the country’s biggest enemies of progress, corruption, with a united purpose.

The poor working relationship has already caught the attention of other governance institutions such as the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC). Last week, MHRC announced in a statement it was mediating talks between the three offices with a view to bringing them back to the same table. MHRC’s statement came at the back of a call by the Malawi Police Service of the ACB director general Martha Chizuma to Area 30 for interrogation. The Area 30 assignment followed a request from the DPP to probe Chizuma after the Mzuzu Senior Magistrate Court ruled that she be investigated on a leaked audio which was recorded from her where she is purported to be disclosing information pertaining to investigations her office is conducting.

Chakwera said he was not happy with reports that some government officials were blocking Chizuma in her fight against corruption in the country. To that effect, Chakwera said he had already engaged the Minister of Justice on the matter and has been assured things will improve.

“I have always defended my choice for her for the role, and I am doing the same now. She is a fighter. That woman … just as I am.”

It is against this background that I say the President’s speech was reassuring on Chizuma’s tenure at the graft-busting institution.

All was well for Chizuma until boom, came the 20-tonne sledge hammer statement that the President would fire some officials should the working relationship between the ACB and some officials remain ice cold.

And with this warning came yet another—albeit tongue in cheek—axiom that: ‘If you can’t change the people, change the people.”

The second warning appeared to take away the assurance that the President would not fire Chizuma. This is because doublespeak is not a stranger to people in the position that Chakwera is. Actually, politicians the world-over revel on double-political speaking. There is a good reason to be afraid, and very afraid, if one also considers the events surrounding the ACB director general in the preceding week.

It is not rocket science for anyone in their right frame of mind to read between the lines that one Frighton Phompho from Chikwawa who resurfaced the issue could just be a smokescreen. The Chikwawa District United Democratic Front (UDF) governor stays for days at Sunbird Mzuzu and moves the court to open a case against Chizuma over the leaked audio as well as to issue an order that she be probed for allegedly violating the Corrupt Practices Act by revealing to a third-party information on ongoing investigations. UDF then suspends him for his action, saying what he did put the party in disrepute. Who cannot see that some top government and moneyed dogs are behind this whole issue?

Why the leaked audio saga should ruffle feathers of those who are pro-Chizuma is because the matter is resurfacing after the President already pardoned the ACB director general on the issue and further pledged that he would not fire her. The question that comes to mind is: Is the President sincere with his promise? Is he merely giving to Peter with one hand and taking away with another?

But for now I will give the President the benefit of doubt on his promise to keep Chizuma at the helm of ACB. One thing no one can take away from Malawians is that Chizuma is in that position by the will and power of the people. They unanimously ‘elected’ her into that position after the Parliamentary Public Appointments Committee rejected her. Firing her would be courting people’s anger.