While you were away, sir
Welcome back Mr. President. We followed your exploits at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, United States, with professional interest. On balance, you did a fairly decent job for your country.
We have taken the liberty of giving a brief, but truthful report of what has been happening in the country while you were away. Mr. President, Malawians are angry that so much money could have been spent on more than 100 people who went to New York when you expressly approved just 18 people. How did the other hangers on find their way there? Malawians cannot wait to hear directly from you on this matter. Then there is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which last week declared off-track the Extended Credit Facility.
We know that some insecure people in government will try to down play the significance of this by claiming that the IMF diagnosis is of no consequence.
Mr. President, those who will say these things get six-figure salaries, drive tax-payer funded cars, live in taxpayer bankrolled houses; are airlifted to foreign hospitals when sick on the public purse and never personally issue a cheque for their children’s expensive education because the government pays for it.
For the mostly below average Malawians—who vote and have to pay dearly for every little need and want—the country has barely survived without the goodwill of our donors.
Because these below average Malawians are the ones who go to the poorly funded hospitals where they get no drugs; send their children to school where they find an unpaid angry teacher who just glares at the pupils and refuses to teach; who endure days without safe-drinking water and subsist on porridge, if lucky, throughout the day. In short, Mr. President, while you were away, the economy has worsened and, we guess, more people have become poorer as both earning and buying power have shrunk sharply.
Our question is: Do you have a plan for saving the economy and helping the suffering Malawians? Or will you just seat and listen to half-baked advice and assurances that things are not as bad as the media portrays?
It is your call, sir.
