Symbolism presidency at it again

Beginning earlier this week, President Joyce Banda planned to take time off her very busy, but unproductive schedule of personally distributing maize flour to the hungry, screaming at critics, burning away taxpayers’ kwachas, keeping a gruelling schedule of aimless local and international travel to actually attend to what has always appeared to her as the small matter of governing.

The President was supposed to start meeting her Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and principal secretaries to receive reports on achievements and progress being made by each ministry.

An apparently excited senior civil servant confided: “This will ensure ministers justify their existence. It will also justify the allocation of resources to their ministries. More importantly, it provides an opportunity for the President to demonstrate that she is serious about running government and demanding performance and accountability.”

That sounds like a plan. But it isn’t. It is a cheap public relations stunt consistent with an administration that believes in symbolism more than substance when it comes to governing.

Mrs. Banda is struggling to shake-off the image that she is a lightweight leader with little interest in policy nuances and who is uncomfortable with the serious business of running the country, but loves the trappings of power; hence, her desire to remain at State House at whatever cost.

Thus, her not-so-clever public relations handlers hastily convinced her to put ministries on the spot so that she is seen to be in control of the country’s affairs.

Like all public relations tactics that are not grounded in a deliberate and broader strategic framework, the latest haphazard shot in the dark at image do-over will soon fade away as other political considerations take priority.

This is not without precedent.

On September 28 this year, the Banda administration also chose symbolism over substance to tackle the historic fiscal crisis by announcing a 30 percent salary cut for the President and the Vice-President while postponing tougher austerity cuts that would make a dent on the deficit.

The idea was to give the impression that the presidency was eager to suffer with everyone. But did the move do much to end wasteful spending?

In fact, it got worse, turning the whole project into a mockery of Malawians’ intelligence. The administration has not even bothered to follow-up on more spending cuts that it promised.

Vice-President Khumbo Kachali, who announced the presidency’s ‘sacrifice’ at the Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe during the official launch of the second Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS II) and the Economic Recovery Plan, claimed that government is actively considering other cost-cutting measures to be announced in “due course”.

Apparently, that course is not yet due.

Finance Minister Dr Ken Lipenga also emphasised at the time that President Banda was determined to reduce her convoy, arguing she would announce other cost-cutting measures.

Malawians are still waiting—in vain.

Many hoped the promised austerity measures would include cutting salaries and allowances for ministers and reducing the daily road shows that have become the President’s pastime.

It was also expected that the administration would get rid of the expensive Mercedes vehicles for ministers as the President had promised, but it was never to be.

It should also be noted that the symbolic salary cut to the presidency followed outrage on the presidency’s frequent internal and external travels with entourages many said were too large for the country’s tattered public purse.

It also followed harsh criticism after the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) hiked ministers’ allowances by 80 percent in August.

Malawians had also been stunned to learn, through an exclusive story published by The Nation, that the President’s three-week trip to the United Nations (UN) in New York with a 40-plus entourage, cost taxpayers K308 million largely through allowances and air-tickets, even as government said it had no money to meet certain basic social obligations.

Again, during that time, donors—particularly those who provide budgetary support under the umbrella of Common Approach to Budgetary Support (Cabs), issued coordinated statements calling for expenditure cuts and sacrifices by every Malawian, including “the privileged”, to put the country’s fiscal house in order and resuscitate the economy.

And today, after withering criticism about her below par management acumen, the administration goes into damage control mode with progress meetings and we are supposed to take them seriously? No way. This is typical Joyce Banda at her symbolic best, nothing substantive as usual.

But I thank God for small mercies because of one tangible benefit to Malawians this mediocre public relations stunt will yield: Taxpayers will save money that could have been blown away by the President’s “Here Today, There Tomorrow” idea of governing as she sits through technical presentations for, hopefully, some weeks.

That, at least, minimises the pain of being forced to watch this badly directed soap opera.