So it takes 12 497km to solve our problems?
In 2016, at the height of satellite communications, a somewhat fast albeit expensive Internet and data connection, it has become much easier to reach out to friends and partners across the globe.
A State House, in fact, would have a state-of-the-art communication system that would enable the President to seamlessly have a chat with the president of the free world, at whatever hour of the day. Even BlackBerry—that company which is unravelling like curtains in a district council office—has the facility to enable group video meetings across oceans and seas that are so clear like a group is sitting around a boardroom table.
Impersonal as it may sound, cyber meetings are cost-effective, especially for a country like Malawi, which is failing to balance a K1.2 trillion budget.
As of today, President Peter Mutharika will have been gone from Malawi for 15 days from State House to gallivant around New York attending gala dinners and receiving meaningless awards that will not benefit Standard 8 pupils at Zolokere Primary School who are still studying in the dark because the government does not find it necessary to connect it to electricity pylons which are a mere five kilometres (km) away.
Instead, the President and his entourage can spend millions of taxpayers’ money and travel 12 497 km to New York to discuss issues concerning education, women empowerment and the economy—issues that the people he is ‘discussing’ with probably know better than he does, thanks to the global communication connections.
It does not hurt to be wined and dined, but it is no wonder that when the President of Malawi returns from New York, the communiqué reads like the bragging session that it is: The President was on a high level panel alongside billionaire Aliko Dangote, the President was a guest of honour at gala dinner or the President received an award from the African Leadership Magazine, an award which someone at State House in an attempt to be seen to be working, nominated the President for with citations so incredulously amazing Malawians back home were left baffled if it were their leader who really won or Tanzania’s John Magufuli.
The 12 497km journey begs the question whether we do really need to attend the talk shop that is the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Other world leaders who know the meeting for the joke that it really is does not waste their time staying longer than it takes for them to deliver a scathing-in-your-face address.
But year in, year out, our government seems to believe that the more economic and social troubles Malawi is experiencing, the more the reason to attend such meetings and stay as long as it is permissible. In his first five years, Bingu did it, in her short two years, Joyce Banda loved UNGA.
Is it any wonder that Malawians are distrustful that any results and benefits can be derived from such meetings? Short of displaying cheques in dollars on arrival at Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) as one president did not so long ago, why do we spend millions upon millions of kwacha on shopping and bragging 12 497km trip that is UNGA?
Does it take UNGA for a president to realise that Malawians are an unhappy lot and that things are going wrong? Should negative stories take the backseat when there is little positivity in the air?
Any journalist worth his salt would certainly not publish a story that the President is enjoying a successful trip to New York when 15 mothers in Mzimba district are mourning the heartbreaking deaths of their babies and Lilongwe City Council fire brigade could not put out a raging fire at the main city market because there was no fuel in their fire engine vehicles.
It must take a lot for the mother in Mzimba or the stall owner in the city market to have ‘hope’ as the President said Malawians should be. It just might be that the hope is only found in New York, 12 497km away from Lilongwe. n
