What other wrongs has Pastor Martin Thom done?
President Lazrus Chakwera established Pastor Martin Thom’s unsanctioned role in the irregular submission of a loan authorisation bill to Parliament amounting to K93 billion and immediately electrocuted him, sending him home.
Timely and expected, good job Mr. President but what other wrongs has Pastor Martin Thom done unknown to everyone else? This is the one-billion-dollar question and it is possible Pastor Thom has left a bottomless pit in the State treasury.
Stages in processing a bill involve clearing it by Cabinet, then published and thereafter given to Parliament 21 days before the House meets. None of this took effect, thanks to Pastor Thom who is innocent until proven guilty by a competent Court of Law.
This Pastor has some sophistry and is no ordinary being for playing a suspected critical role in the smuggling of a loan authorisation bill to Parliament without Cabinet approval. Unheard of in the history of Parliament and has left the country in utter shock.
This game has the hallmarks of Mafioso, organised crime, corruption of morals and high-profit trading. Maybe what is missing is drug trafficking and bookmaking. Otherwise, the conduct of Pastor Thom can earn him a dear spot in the heart of filmmaker Ford Coppola- the man behind the movie Godfather.
Of all the things that Pastor has done in the last one year, he has only been caught on one, chances are there are a billion deals of like nature that have gone through without the public eye catching him.
This could not have been the first attempt to act like he is Sicilian or from Cosa Nostra. That is the worry and in earnest Financial Intelligence Agency, Anti-Corruption Bureau and Police’s Fiscal Unit in concert with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution must follow the lifestyle, assets, money transactions of this quick-witted fella. He may have a chain of wrongs; focus must be holistic.
Look, bill Number 22 of 2021 loan authorisation to allow government to borrow about K93 billion to finance construction of houses for security agencies—Malawi Police Service and Malawi Defence Force (MDF), on July 9 2021 miraculously was on the Order Paper—suffocating the entire State bureaucracy for a bill of this criticality. What a noble cause!
The Office of the Attorney General (AG), Cabinet Committee on Legal Affairs and Ministry of Justice were all left in the dark but the bill was on the order paper and secretly removed on discovery. On this transaction, many people feigning ignorance could be just as knowledgeable as compromised on this transaction especially National Assembly staff.
Anyway, money was to be borrowed from Bank of Baroda’s (BoB), who have a record of a fine levied by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), among other issues that could facilitate interesting peeping into their dealings.
But the South African central bank actions suggested BoB’s involvement in the “State Capture” scandal, simply a storm of allegations that President Jacob Zuma was under the armpits of three brothers from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh — Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh Gupta, collectively known as “The Guptas”.
We end here on the Bank intended to finance a K93 billion loan to Malawi.
Now, the companies lined up to be involved in the construction of the houses for the security agents essentially to benefit from this can make interesting reading.
Minister of Justice Titus Mvalo who sits on top of drafting of all government bills and chairs the Cabinet Committee on Legal Affair and former ex-AG Chikosa Silungwe are in awe, denying approving the bill. Then who drafted the bill? and reading it, boy the hands are good and language befitting the bill. The process of qualifying to be put on the order paper—guiding document of Parliamentary agenda or Business of the day is as hectic as procedural. The man or woman who instructed the printing has a tale to tell.
Assuming Pastor Thom pressured officials at the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finance and Parliament to play somersault and have the bill tabled then the expression “Instructions from the above” must be criminalised in the country. People who have not been sent by the President go out there masquerading as though they have been sent to do all manner of things and unsuspecting victims have no way of checking. Then we have an innocent President suffering all the flak and taking all bullets.
Godot, the worry is, what other wrongs has Pastor Thom, a prolific, powerful, charismatic preacher, Senior Pastor of Eleventh – is – a – spiritual done?
