We have rich Europe to thank

Hon. Folks, the passing of Access to Information Bill would not have been a condition for budgetary support had government—from the administration of Bakili Muluzi, Bingu wa Mutharika, Joyce Banda and now, Peter Mutharika—not been so rabidly averse to transparency and accountability.

ATI, as access to information is sometimes called, is provided for in Section 37 of the Constitution and European Union (EU) is pushing for the creation of  an enabling law for it 21 years after the Constitution was adopted and put to use.

It should be stressed here that the Constitution, which is also referred to as the supreme law of the land, was not imposed on us by the EU or any donor. It is our own Constitution, cobbled through a consultative process involving representatives of a cross section of the Malawian society.

At the dawn of the multi-party dispensation, there was consensus that the aspirations of new Malawi required discarding the old Constitution which worked for the one party system and adopting a new one that did not only recognise a multi-party system of government but also the fact that, unlike in the past, the multiparty government was meant serve the people and not vice versa.

Section 12 of the Constitution best captures the “fundamental principles” for which every president I have listed above took a solemn oath to uphold and defend.

Interestingly, none of them has shown willingness to head a government that is truly transparent and answerable to the people.  This fact is best attested to by the fact that through the years, the Constitution has been subjected to a tinkering that follows certain discernible patterns.

First, the constitution has been subjected to several changes such as those associated with Section 65 which reflects the machinations of the party on the government to survive by hook or crook.

Its equivalent at the level of members of Parliament is the double-bloating of two provisions in the Constitution—S.68 which provides for Senate and S.64, the recall provision.

Historically, it should be appreciated that the mess on Section 65 and sections 64 and 68 was scooped and polished at the anvil of UDF under Muluzi and all his successors found the outcome of short-changing the electorate too sweet to change for the better.

Another mess to the Constitution that also started on the watch of Muluzi was the deliberate effort to simply ignore certain parts of it, especially those that demanded of those holding positions of authority to demonstrate their compliance with the tenets of good governance.

One good example is the tendency by all the presidents of the multi-party era to selectively embrace Section 89 by exercising with passion all the powers it gives them while dodging, again with a passion, their duty to account to the people by answering questions in Parliament as stipulated in S.89(3)(c) and S.89(4).

Why not account for their actions and shed light on their policies to Malawians through Parliament? The answer is encapsulated in the adage: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When skeletons begin to amass in the cupboard, who wants interrogation!

We know the tax-free salary of a president is under K36 million a year. Yet, virtually any president becomes an instant multi-million kwacha political philanthropist and his or her party instantly becomes the richest party in the land.

The fact that the mystery behind the riches that come with the authority to exercise power of State appears to correlate with the rise in corruption may explain why the enabling law for the provision on asset declaration still appears to be as weak as a premature baby despite that it has taken over 20 years to be delivered.

But as far as ATI is concerned, it still remains a promise and if enacted this year, we shall have the rich Europeans to thank for it. Otherwise, nothing—not even the corruption that has hit the local  development fund (LDF)—could have been good enough reason for allowing the people to access public information.

In public, politicians claim they fear media would use such information to get at them. Yet the truth is that we get at them without ATI. What ATI will do is empower the people at the grassroots with public information that can enable them to track down the management of resources for development and blow the whistle on fraudsters or raise informed questions on areas of incompetence.

The question still is: Who benefits from defrauding government at any level. If there is no political will, it means first suspect are the politicians. My take is that civil servants only take advantage of what their political masters do and take corruption to Cashgate proportions.