Tonse MPs should not fill silence with trivia
Hon. Folks, they say silence is awkward and as a result, many people often rush to fill it. Someone also said it is better to be quiet when absolute nonsense troubles your mind.
Moreover, the past two weeks have shown some lawmakers that careless talk can be very costly and a simple slip of the tongue can set many back and destroy a reputation.
In the on-going Parliament sitting in Lilongwe some lawmakers wanted to excel by nonsense at the expense of critical challenges facing millions of Malawians, but alas, they were trimmed to size in no time.
In the past two weeks, we have seen how two overzealous members of Parliament (MPs) from the government benches drew insults for themselves following their unintelligible contributions to the August House, which also created thrills on social media.
It all started with a Malawi Congress Party (MCP) MP from Ntchisi who said Malawians in the villages are not looking for solutions to soaring cooking oil prices, adding that this problem is for the elite only.
This MP was reacting to the Leader of Opposition in Parliament, Kondwani Nankhumwa’s response to President Lazarus Chakwera’s State of the nation Address (Sona) delivered in the Chamber when the President opened the current Fifth Meeting in the 49th Session of Parliament and the 2020/2023 Budget Meeting on February 3.
In smothering Chakwera’s otherwise blooming speech moulded around fixing broken public systems, Nankhumwa slammed the President’s Tonse Alliance-led administration for ignoring the plight of poor Malawians by overlooking important issues such as rising prices of basic commodities and services almost on a daily basis.
Honourable folks, this is what prompted the MP, who is also one of the senior MCP backbenchers in Parliament, to stand up and chatter his gibberish, which he later swallowed back by apologising and claiming he was misquoted by critics.
Ironically, Malawians in the villages form the majority of our population and the biggest constituency of voters. These ‘villagers’ have commanded our representative democracy at the ballot since 1993 and I commend the MP for regaining his senses and apologising for his absurd remarks.
Then on Wednesday this week, another MCP legislator from Lilongwe also turned the National Assembly into a playhouse when he asked Parliament to buy raincoats for all the 193 MPs using taxpayers’ money, arguing that they face challenges to access the Chamber during the rainy season.
Certainly, this was another insult to Malawians who are suffering from various problems such as hunger, shortage of drugs in public hospitals and the deadly effects of the recent floods in the Lower Shire and other parts of the country.
As long as we continue having such people as representatives in Parliament, we can be assured that this country will not prosper any time soon as preached by the Tonse administration. These MPs already pocket huge sums of money in salaries, allowances and loans all sponsored by taxpayers and begging raincoats that roughly cost less than K15 000 from that elevated platform was just another goof of the century by a Parliamentarian.
And as long as we continue electing such people to Parliament this country will never realise the development aspirations of martyrs and pioneers of democracy who fought white colonialists and Malawian dictators for a better Malawi.
It may not be the role political parties in Parliament to regulate views (or irrational tantrums) of their MPs since they are accountable to the electorate, but seriously Parliament must stop condoning such ridiculous MPs because they will succeed in diluting the power of parliamentary debate thereby ruining the overall mandate of the National Assembly, including making good laws that govern the country.
Parliament may be ideal for Tonse Alliance MPs to display individual intellect in a bid to boost their profiles and chances of making it into the next Cabinet, but they must never hold the floor to fill a silence, especially when they do not have anything useful to fill it with.
