Goodal Gondwe is wasting our precious time
Around this time, this season last year, we, the Bottom Up expedition team comprising Alhajj Mufti Jean-Philippe LePoisson, SC (RTD); the Most Paramount Native Authority Mzee CheNsomba Mandela; Abiti Joyce Befu, MG 66; and I, Malawi’s only Mohashoi, said in very clear Malawian English that Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, Goodall Gondwe was wasting taxpayers’ money and our precious farming and ‘self de-povertisation’ thinking time.
We said in crystal clear language that Gondwe and his team at the Ministry of Finance were playing games only vindele vyakufikapo could not see. We said then and repeat it today that Gondwe’s annual intercity pilgrimages to Mount Soche Hotel in Blantyre, Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe and Mzuzu Hotel–in Nkhata Bay—were tax-payer funded holiday extravaganzas masquerading as pre-budget consultations.
Last year, we warned that unless the poor women, youths, and men and their chiefs—from village heads through Group Village Heads to Sub-Traditional Authorities, Traditional Authorities, Senior Chiefs, Paramount Chiefs, and of course the Most Paramount Chief Mzee CheNsomba Mandela—are consulted Malawi’s national budget, our budget, would deliver nothing for the poor.
We also argued last year that budget planning and implementation consultation should be held where the 85 percent of Malawians live. It is in villages that the people know how to plan and implement budgets. Gondwe should consult the people of Likoma and Chizumulu, Salima and Ntchisi, Chikwawa and Nsanje on how to live less extravagantly.
Our other reasoning was very simple but perhaps unaccepted to many people who go around claiming that they are top notch economists and budget experts. We argued, last year, that the people that are consulted year-in year-out are the very people that have made us, Malawians, fail.
The people who meet annually during the pre-budget meetings have one thing in common. They were taught by the same textbook-reliant teachers whose teachings have not shaken even a housefly, a mosquito or a nkhungu. The same failed economic, development and budgeting theories are passed on to students and finally to national budget planners.
What new ideas does Gondwe not expect to get from the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Bankers Association of Malawi (BAM), the civil society, non-governmental organisations, academia and university students? These are the same groups and so-called experts that have been consulted ad nauseum and failed us for 52 years.
We are not saying that every contribution made during the pre-budget-cum-holiday meetings is useless. There are good and progressive budgeting ideas. However, if these pre-budget participants or discussants were really observant they would easily have learnt that their clever ideas and proposals are rarely factored into Malawi’s budgets, our budgets. Even if they are considered in writing, they are never implemented.
Recall? civil society organisations have years cried for pro-poor, which we call pro-poverty, budgets which minister Gondwe may have accepted in word and in writing but not in deed.
We want to be very open with everybody who likes these fake consultations on budget making. We will not go and waste our time eating doughnuts, drinking fantakoko and grandstanding instead of thinking about how to make our lives better without breaking the law.
In the federal republic of Malawi, the budget is weaved around government policy and plans. The budget belongs to the President. Goodall already knows what his boss, our boss and President, Moya Arthur Peter Mutharika wants to be in the 2017-2018 budget. In that order, the key budget issues for this government, our government include: State Residences; Community Colleges; Food Security; Mombera University, and urban roads. So why should anyone else be consulted?
If Goodall believes these intercity prebudget meetings work, let him tell us which ones he has ever been implemented.
