Thank you for the bullet train, Tonse
August 12, 2021
If there is one obscure thing the Tonse Alliance promised us was the bullet train. Today, let me stand here to thank the Malawi Congress Party (MCP)-led alliance for giving us the Shinkansen, as the bullet train is also called in Japan.
It would be outright unjust not to thank the Tonse Alliance for giving us this train, that has brought us the supersonic speed of travelling from Nsanje to Chitipa in two hours.
Make no mistakes about it, Malawi at the moment is the very bullet train the Tonse Alliance promised us. They are delivering and we are trusting the process wholeheartedly.
Even more, the clearing the rubble axiom is nothing but a reality now. When all of us believed clearing the rubble would entail clearing the mess the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) reduced our nation to.
The supersonic speed we are moving is so dizzying. The rate at which the rubble is being cleared in the Tonse Alliance fold is, simply put, amazing.
President Lazarus Chakwera is the one in control of this bullet train we are all riding at the moment. It has been difficult to cross-check this piece of data. But, in about four months, he has fired two members of his Cabinet. In April, he dropped Labour Minister Ken Kandodo after an audit report indicated that the Minister used about K630 000 in the disputed K62 billion Covid funds heist. For the record, Chakwera later said he had acted hastily since it was officials in the ministry who diverted money from the Covid-19 bag to facilitate the minister’s trip to South Africa.
Only this week, Chakwera has dropped his Energy Minister Newton Kambala who was earlier arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on allegations that Kambala and others may have had a hand to ‘coerce’ the National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) into awarding dubious fuel contracts.
As we are saying, the bullet train that is clearing the rubble has not spared the men around the locomotive operator. In two weeks, we have seen the President firing two of his aides, whose positions are as obscure as the crimes they are suspected to have committed. How did they find themselves in the ‘crimes’?
Pastor Martin Thom, the presidential aide on special duties, was arrested allegedly for his hand in the cutting corners for the Loan Authorisation Bill for a K92 billion loan. A week later, another aide, Christopher Chaima Banda was fired, after he was arrested in the Nocma affair. Then, Tonse Alliance partner Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president Chakufwa Chihana was arrested in the same affair.
The Nocma affair, in a nutshell, is that the three men, close to the President in their own way, are suspected to have tried to influence decisions at Nocma, using the ‘Mr President is aware line’.
Passengers of this bullet train are on the edges of their seats. This bullet train is moving real fast. It is only posterity that will help us look back and see: Finally, here was a man who lived his word and delivered his promise to bring us a bullet train. Not an ordinary train, but a Shinkansen that is clearing the rubble in his backyard with supersonic speed.
By the way, what did they tell us about the price of fertiliser?
