Front PagePolitical Index Feature

Unlocked lock: Allegory of loot?

Banda administration reversed some harmful policies, but has not been clear or declaration of assets
Banda administration reversed some harmful policies, but has not been clear or declaration of assets

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, one of the most widely read novels of all time, flags his 2013 publication, Inferno, with a line from Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

It is, therefore, required to comment on the taxpayers’ money that has found its way into some individuals’ pockets, car boots and houses—the moral crisis—at the Capital Hill in Lilongwe to evade ‘sizzling and roasting in a gigantic lick of fire and brimstone in hell’.

Truthfully, the obscene and incessant looting of public funds at the Capital Hill by civil servants, many exposed after the ‘Paul Mphwiyo-gate scandal’, is nothing but a moral crisis.

It is, indeed, gross inhuman for some persons to turn the Capital Hill into a den of iniquity and steal millions of kwacha, for personal benefits, from the public purse of a country such as Malawi that will soon enter its jubilee year, celebrating the 50th birthday since the attainment of independence from British colonial rule in 1964, when the forecast of its development prospects is bleak.

Compared to its immediate neighbours—Zambia, to the west, Tanzania, in the north, Mozambique, in the south—Malawi can best be described as an island of spectacular failure in as far as the question of development is concerned; it remains a warm heart, smiling in the way of approaching ruthless poverty.

Poverty and inequality in Malawi, for example, remain distinct although there have been slight improvements in the recent past. The headcount poverty slightly declined from 52.4 to 50.2 percent between 2005 and 2011 according to the recent Integrated Household Survey (IHS). On the other hand, the proportion of the ultra-poor rose from 22.2 to 25 percent. The gini-coefficient, which measures the gap between the rich and the poor, worsened from 0.39 to 0.45.

Furthermore, the 2013 Human Development Report indicates that life expectancy at birth in Malawi is at 74.8 percent. Infant mortality rate is at 58 per 1 000 live births while maternal mortality is 581 deaths per 100 000 according to 2010 Demographic Health Survey.

Eighty percent of Malawi population live in rural areas where the majority depends on rain-fed subsistence farming. The country ranked 170 out of 187 on 2013 Human Development Index (HDI) – statistics used to rank countries by level of human development.

Malawi’s trade deficit ratio to gross domestic product (GDP) is too alarming for its economic survival, let alone development. The country’s monthly import bill is pegged at $188.3 million while 2013 annual tobacco sales raked in $362 million. And tobacco is the country’s main foreign exchange earner as other exports such as tea, sugar, mining and tourism generate less than $200 million annually.

More indices can be cited to justify that poverty in Malawi remains deep, widespread and severe.

But the yoke of public finances’, personal property and lives’ lack of security that hangs heavy over Malawi, sinking it and suffocating it with each passing day, cannot surprise anyone who cracks the thinly veiled lax leadership symbols depicted by President Joyce Banda and her People’s Party (PP) administration.

Perhaps a conspicuous symbol, inadvertently ignored by the public, is track record. Some of Banda’s past performance, despite all her achievements, demonstrates how at times uninspiring she is at managing public affairs.

Of course, despite in 2005 appearing before the Agriculture Committee of Parliament to explain her role on the maize acute shortage in the country between 2001 and 2002, whereby over 60 000 people starved, the President has never been implicated in the maize mismanagement scam. However, although innocent, as she appears to be in the current ‘Capital Hill Cashgate scandal’, that reportedly a colossal ‘plundering’ of the grain reserves in the history of Malawi by then ruling party politicians and top government officials, partly blamed for the starvation, took place right under her nose as then chairperson of Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) exposes more of her laissez-faire leadership style.

With a background like this, surely, the President and her government are 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.

Recall that both her post-one-party predecessors, Bakili Muluzi and the late Bingu wa Mutharika, were tainted by episodes of dipping into the taxpayers’ pot before ascending to the presidency.

The former was prosecuted and served time for it while the latter lost his position at the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) for it. Sadly, both never learnt a thing from their experiences. The country knows how dismal their ‘contributions’ were to the fight against official corruption and wastefulness.

Another blatant symbol is definitely the unlocked lock—an emblem on PP colours that makes public that an embrace of the PP is no doubt an ‘until-death’ marriage with the conjugal rewards of the extremes of heartless corruption, hopeless economic stagnation, abject poverty and a dearth of a reasoned existence for our nation.

The unlocked lock is an allegory almost certainly Banda’s recycled political cronies, some government workforce and any other depraved characters have ‘rightly’ interpreted that upon assuming power in April 2012, the Banda administration did not only reverse some of the harmful policies of the previous Bingu wa Mutharika regime but firefight the declaration of assets provision in the country’s laws and open the door to plunder of any kind and magnitude, including that of public resources freshly reported in the local media.

Little wonder The Nation of 30 September 2013 reported that on September  28 2013, some daring vandals entered premises that from time to time house a Head of State, Sanjika Palace, which is heavily guarded around the clock, and drained oil from an electricity transformer, occasioning a blackout to staff houses.

Fighting official corruption and wastefulness in both government and private sectors, however, is about leadership integrity and political will. Lack of ethical leadership and lack of integrity among leaders in both the private and public sectors is a recipe for ‘fuelling’ corruption in the country and encouraging an unhelpful attitude towards wastefulness in both sectors.

Thus, Banda, as a Head of State, has failed not only to set ‘high moral standards’ that can be emulated by the citizenry but “to promote that which will advance and to oppose all that may harm the Republic”, hence the uncanny behaviour of those below her that is possibly an embodiment of PP’s unlocked lock.

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