Weekly Agenda

The man bitten by dog

 

A man who had been bitten by a dog went about in quest of someone who might heal him.

A friend, meeting him and learning what he wanted, said: “If you would be cured, take a piece of bread, and dip it in the blood from your wound, and go and give it to the dog that bit you.”

The man who had been bitten laughed at this advice and said: “Why? If I should do so, it would be as if I should beg every dog in the town to bite me.”

Without doubt, majority Malawians lack the wisdom depicted by the man bitten by the dog that benefits bestowed upon the evil-disposed simply increase their means of injuring you.

That is more the reason all the country’s leaders—dead or alive—laced with some dark history of the country seem to live or lived in a different world where there are no terms of reference for the job they were hired to do.

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As one would have thought, the thieving and looting and mismanagement of public resources fail to engender vitriolic anger enough to set the country on fire and make these leaders to never ever contemplate looting or mismanage public resources.

Or else it is touching on the much-talked-about illiteracy where the majority of the citizenry fail to see any connection between the looted or mismanaged resources and their horrifying tax returns.

If not, very few consider themselves as serious taxpayers in any identifiable manner whatsoever or the majority of the citizenry just do not see any connection between the quality of public service delivery and the balance-books of available resources.

Recall that Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) first president the late Bingu wa Mutharika, was tainted by episodes of dipping into the taxpayers’ pot before ascending to the country’s presidency.

But no serious attention was paid to such a warning.

During his tenure Bingu perfected the art of embezzlement.

He establishment an ethnic syndicate that stretched and cut across nearly all strategic government ministries, departments and institutions.

This act alone made looting easy and safe from the law and watchdog institutions which were conveniently paralysed.

It is on record that at the time of his sudden death in April, 2012, from nowhere, the man had under his armpit a staggering K61 billion in assets and bank accounts.

With a background like this, surely, Malawians would have known that President Peter Mutharika and his DPP government should be the last to encourage and support the creation of an enabling environment for accountability and transparency in public and corporate affairs, much less encourage and support campaigns against corruption and wastefulness in the sectors.

Thus, caught with the country is Member of Parliament for Rumphi East Kamlepo Kalua”s (People’s Party) allegations that the government purchased K4 billion worth of vehicles at the time the country’s economy is on the deathbed.

Kalua, speaking in Parliament, alleged that the Executive had spent K650 million to buy Toyota Prado VX models for the presidential convoy and four Toyota Landcruiser V8 models for the Vice-President.

He also alleged that the Executive bought 10 Toyota Prados for senior officials and 30 similar vehicles for principal secretaries in government.

And even the garrulous leader in the House Francis Kasaila, and Minister of Information, Tourism and Civic Education Jappie Mhango have sealed their mouths on this one.

But Mutharika and his ‘all-Mutharika-surrogate’ government machinery that ensured he surrounded himself with might have acted in such a way because Malawians defied the wisdom of the man bitten by the dog and took a piece of bread to DPP on May 20 2014 knowing full well of its dark history. n

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