More work for Chakwera

Hon. Folks, last week I opined that the 2019 elections are for MCP to lose and DPP knows it and is doing everything possible to steal the limelight from a rival who is shining simply by not being at the helm when the economy is in a mess.
It’s been a battle of wits. The Executive deliberately smears MCP leadership with the rot from the Second Estate—Parliament where the party’s vice president Richard Msowoya is at the helm and its president Lazarus Chakwera is Leader of the Opposition.
The aim appears to be portraying these so-called leaders of a government-in-waiting as inept, self-serving and even corrupt; anything but a better alternative to the current political leadership. That way, the 2019 elections would not be a choice between good and bad but rather the devil you know and the devil you don’t know.
I dare say exposing the soft underbelly of MCP isn’t bad politics at all. These folks haven’t been in government for 21 years. They should wake up and scale the heights of multiparty democracy where freedom of expression allows for tolerance of dissenting views. The last time MCP was in government, leadership bashing was unheard of. Wake up and smell the coffee, as APM likes to say.
Which is why, though incensed by the fact that NIB under Nicholas Dausi appears to be getting dangerously partisan, pro-DPP to be precise, its yarn is nevertheless giving players from both sides of the political divide, some good jazz they just can’t ignore.
See what happened when NIB alleged that with foreign funding, Chakwera (who, it was alleged, pocketed K10 million) partnered with civil society organisations to stir trouble for the APM administration recently?
Government quickly mobilised its own mercenaries who prepared placards and marched in the streets of Lilongwe the same day the so-called Chakwera/civil society march took place. APM just didn’t want his rival to have the first mover advantage!
Ironically, what we saw from the much feared Chakwera-CSO march was one Billy Mayaya and a few other ordinary citizens exercising their right to assemble and hold peaceful demonstrations. The mercenaries just messed up the case for government: did they inform city fathers and the police? If yes, did the authorities give a nod to their march? If not, then are the so-called authorities mere cronies those in government abuse like MBC?
Nonetheless, it appears both APM and Chakwera tried to personally use the NIB report to their advantage. In the rallies APM held after the report had been issued, his message was that government has a plan to get this country out of poverty. On the other hand, the opposition is clueless on what can turn-around the economy. All it does is waste time criticising.
His punch-line: it’s time to come together and build Malawi by rolling out a DPP agenda. It’s a message that resonates with APM’s inaugural speech in which he claimed to have extended an olive branch to the opposition, particularly Joyce Banda and her PP, for the sake of moving on and building Malawi.
What followed were unsubstantiated claims of JB sending an assassin masquerading as a doctor to APM when he was incarcerated together with other DPP leaders on charges of treason. Government also tried to put to good use the Baker Tilly Cashgate forensic audit which by design only focused on a period of six month within the JB administration by heaping the entire Cashgate scam and its biting consequences on the JB administration.
It’s only now, thanks to the Germans, the British, EU and others, who engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a forensic audit for the entire 2009 to 2014 period that we shall be able to see the magnitude of the rot under both DPP (2009-2012) and PP (2012-2014).
As for now, APM still enjoys associating PP only with Cashgate, describing its known culprits as heartless, lacking in Umunthu. Meanwhile the heat is too much for JB back home, and for over a year, she’s on the run in foreign capitals with no sign of returning any time soon.
As for Chakwera, the NIB report indeed helped him to smell coffee. When APM delivered a speech at the opening of the 46th session of Parliament last Friday, the Leader of the Opposition reciprocated on Monday with an unprecedented scathing criticism, saying what APM touts as a plan is in fact a no plan at all.
Things were indeed getting better. People in government won’t tell APM the truth—they don’t! What Chakwera served as a mirror in which the APM administration could see the ripe, pus-filled pimples on its face.
But will Chakwera also prod the Speaker to stop waffling on the house-rental scam involving his two deputies—Clement Chiwaya and Esther Mcheka-Chilenje? These two devised a sinister scheme through which they made government pay more rental than they were entitled as occupants of own houses. The scheme also exerted undue pressure on government which operates on a cash-budget, to pay them quarterly, at least initially.
Isn’t this theft? It’s amazing therefore that the Speaker—Chakwera’s deputy in MCP—can say on record there’s no law to guide him on what to do with them.  If these people are allowed to serve in honourable offices as if nothing has happened, where is leadership in Parliament?n