The man I want to be President from May next year will not be President. He will not be on the ballot. Neither will he campaign for the office. I reckon, he doesn’t even know that he needs to be President.
But he is still out there answering a different call of duty. And for the last two years, he has done a hell of a great job. For his country and its future citizens, Charles Kajoloweka has done so much. Without much-enjoying anything close to the limelight, without seeking it or basking in it, Kajoloweka has become Malawi’s saviour.
He has not invented anything that will make Malawi a world beater in technology or anything. But if one day our children will live in a country that is not a failed state, and go on to invent things that would draw global admiration, they would probably have Kajoloweka to thank.
For, surely, he is showing the way on how to save motherland. And motherland is currently under attack from within, from people who swore to protect and defend it. They are also dismembering the dreams of our children—thanks to the corrosive cancer of their corruption.
Kajoloweka offers hope that the battle against dark forces can be won.
So, in reality, he is the only person whom at the moment I can vote for and peacefully sleep at night for he is fighting, day and night, against the very evil that keeps us from sleeping at peace at night.
Kajoloweka is not an old man. But neither can we call him a young man—provoking memories of one 35th US president, John F Kennedy, who once challenged that you do not need grey hair to show leadership.
Unlike the old caricature of civil society in this country, Kajoloweka is not just walking the streets singing and carrying placards of protest. He is the Robin Hood going after the country’s biggest thieves in the most legal means possible.
He is taking those allegedly stealing from the public coffers—trying to save our hard-earned taxes.
And he is vigorously doing so when for long, colleagues in civil society could only think about press statements, vigils or marching against injustice. Not Kajoloweka.
Actually, Kajoloweka has done more to save our taxes than Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima combined.
If it’s your party that used public funds at its fundraising dinner, Kajoloweka will ask a judge to freeze your account and order you to pay back the money. He is practical. He is a patriot.
He can be trusted with our money; he knows it belongs to Malawians and it must be returned to them each time someone is caught dipping their fingers in the cork jar.
For that reason, unlike some of these presidents who tolerate thieves simply because they are their cronies, Kajoloweka wouldn’t hesitate to fire any public official caught stealing public funds. He would not tolerate an ACB that would investigate but not arrest the thieves.
For what Kajaloweka has demonstrated, if he were president, he would appoint people to senior positions with moral high ground to help rid of corruption in the country and not ones who would authorise questionable settlements or seek to muzzle those calling for justice.
What else do I see in Ka j o l oweka? A man cognisant of the importance of institutions such as ACB be reformed legally, just like President Peter Mutharika did in the DPP manifesto for 2014 elections. He pledged to free ACB, but once in office, refused calls to provide more autonomy to ACB.
Kajoloweka would launch a serious crusade against corruption in this country if he were president. And what effect would that be! What a good president would he be.
For a change, donors would pump in more cash in our public finance management systems because they would know the country is being run by people of high integrity.
Our taxpayers’ money would be put to good use and the shame of seeing children learning under trees or dying from preventable diseases because hospitals are perennially underfunded would be eased.
Next year Kajoloweka would not be president. He will not be on the ballot, I just hope someone with his spirit, patriotism and courage, wins the polls. But even if any exist, Kajoloweka is the one who has demonstrated he is ready for the job.
