Cut the Chaff

It’s all about symbolism Mr. President

Let’s get rid of the noise first. It is ridiculous to be crying over spilt milk. I want to believe that State House is telling the truth in stating that the roughly K100 million vehicle bought for President Peter Mutharika was budgeted for.

In other words, they submitted their annual expenditure plan to the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development.

I assume, and there is no reason why that would not happen, Treasury went through the State House budget line by line and accepted the fiscal proposal, including the buying of the new car for the Head of State.

Treasury then dutifully submitted the consolidated budget and in turn submitted to Parliament for scrutiny and eventual passing.

During the Committee of Supply, members of Parliament (MPs) are required to debate expenditure allocations to each government ministry, department and agency (MDAs). The legislators had a responsibility to go through each vote line by line and the same goes for the State Residences vote.

On that basis, I put it that the parliamentarians saw this budget item under State Residences and found nothing wrong with it. They proceeded to pass the vote and the National Budget.

So, why whine now?

The reason is simple. MPs didn’t see the item or else they would have raised hell in Parliament, especially the opposition bloc. They could not notice it because they were too busy pushing for their subsidised general purpose loan—an early Christmas present.

They could not spot it because their focus was on getting more money for their free and favourite campaign tool—the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).

The legislators did not do their job well because in essence, it is Parliament that allocates money to votes even though it is Treasury that does the leg work of putting the numbers and programmes together.

So, if there is blame that must be apportioned for the latest presidential vehicle, it has to be legislators. The media too went to sleep and I hope we journalists have picked up a lesson on in-depth and thorough analysis of the national budget, especially a vote-by-vote scrutiny of the fiscal plan.

Having said that it is not enough for State House to remind everyone that the vehicle was budget for. Budgets are plans that can change depending on both the internal and external environment.

When the budget was being crafted, there were certain assumptions that underpinned it. For example, the economy—as measured by gross domestic product (GDP)—was supposed to grow by more than five percent.

But even before the budget could be implemented in earnest, the International Monetary Fund, the Economist Intelligence Unit and later the Government of Malawi itself sharply revised economic growth estimates to around three percent.

That change in GDP assumptions alone can potentially destabilize the national budget. The GDP assumption is just one of many examples of what can change to force postponement, even cancellation, of planned expenditure.

There is no question about it: the President of the Republic of Malawi is entitled to vehicles, including new ones to ensure that he efficiently and effectively discharges his or her duties as the chief executive of this country.

Indeed, his security is top priority; hence, he cannot be driving around in cars that are in poor condition. What if he has breakdowns and gets ambushed?

The problem is that I have seen the ‘old’ vehicles that the President was using. I don’t know how old they are (State House says 10 years), but given how they cruise around, they appear to be in fantastic enough shape to make the President and his handlers wait for an improvement in public finances before making the splash.

Most importantly, symbolism is very important in leadership. Just about a month ago, Finance, Economic Planning and Development Minister Goodall Gondwe told me and my colleague Suzgo Khunga during a sit-down at his office in Lilongwe that he plans to cut public spending by as much as 30 percent over the short to medium term.

He went as far as citing the government fleet, which he described as too large for the size of the economy, as one of the examples of wasteful spending.

Gondwe has in fact commissioned someone to specifically look at the government fleet and see how much can be saved from there. Weeks later, Gondwe’s boss—President Mutharika—has added at least one more car to that fleet.

What message does that send about the political will to get difficult tasks done? What example is the President setting for the rest of the MDAs?

Furthermore, in modern politics, leaders must be seen to suffer with the masses. It is important for social stability in the face of painful economic situations.

For example, roughly two months ago, Weekend Nation published a heartbreaking story of how desperately ill-equipped, ill-funded and ill-staffed Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) is. The frustrated KCH head must be wondering what he could have done with K100 million!

And the highlighted KCH story is, but only a microcosm of a wider public health crisis across the country that President Mutharika, who boasts of having a United States of America health insurance, does not experience the way Malawians do.

But then, President Mutharika should have picked up a lesson from the death of his elder brother Bingu wa Mutharika.

It was the same public health sector, which Bingu underfunded that may have failed him in the end as he died amid its failures. It is a tasteless reference, I know, but sometimes callousness maybe the only way to get some of these messages across. Those who witnessed Bingu’s last minutes on earth testify to how unready our public health system is to emergencies and emerging threats. No one should die needlessly if it can be helped.

The point, Mr. President, is that you cannot afford not to be politically correct. You have to send the right signals to the public service and the citizens who trust you to govern responsibly, selflessly and fairly.

In times of austerity, Sir, you have to be the symbol of the frugality. I have heard some people calling it “Leading by example.”

But then, I may have heard wrong.

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