Emily Mkamanga

Mutharika’s govt loosing focus

It is a well known fact that good leadership is key to the success of a country. Naturally, no leader wants to be called a failure even if there are all signs that they are running a failed government. It must also be mentioned that leadership style determines the success or failure of a leader.

A focused leader is one who is willing to respect other people’s views and opinions as paramount if there is to be progress in a country. People usually admire the success of Mauritius, which is a small island country in the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) region. It mostly relies on tourism and sugar exports. What is more fascinating about Mauritius is that at times the leader of the opposition leads a government delegation outside the country. To them, representing the country and its people is more important than domestic party politics. This is the way things should be in civilised politics. The opposition is respected as the government-in-waiting. But, not here in Malawi.

In this country, disrespect for the opposition goes as far as calling the opposition leader in Parliament as ‘a village idiot’. This was alleged so at a political rally held by President Peter Mutharika at Thyolo community ground on July 12 2015. Surprisingly, the President talks a lot about fostering unity in the country. One wonders what kind of unity he has in mind if in his presence a party leader can call the opposition leader ‘a village idiot’. With all due respect, this is a sign of losing focus on the part of the President.

Losing focus is also evidently clear when the President held a rally at Ndirande in Blantyre on July 19 where he castigated the press for writing rubbish. This is unfortunate because the press has a lot of information that the government can use.  Ignoring the press entirely is tantamount to ignoring whistle-blowing as well as checks and balances which would benefit government.

What the DPP government should realise is that the Thyolo rally was more of a kicking off of a 2019 campaign rally than anything else.  Talking about 2019 election seems to be a deliberate move to divert people’s attention from the numerous problems that people are facing.  The usual holding reply that the government is sorting out problems does not hold water at all.

The President might deny that he was not campaigning at the Thyolo rally. However, his speech was about rating himself highly as a winning candidate for the 2019 elections. He said he was to win a landslide as he sees no one who can beat him at the polls. The President seems to have the assumption that no one else in DPP wants to stand as a candidate. His declaration can easily trigger infighting in the party, especially if there are some aspiring members.

The other thing, which shows that the government is losing focus, is the launch of all manner of reports, strategic plans etc by the President.  This can be easily be done by principal secretaries or directors. But one is meant to believe that the idea of using the Head of State is may be to register the launches as government achievements. This is wrong because things like strategic plans are just like intentions. Therefore ruling a country by celebrating intentions does not make much sense. People want to see implementations and achievements that the plans bring.

Obviously, the government might say it is focused.  This does not hold water because things are falling apart in the country. Imagine, it is a way of life now that even getting a basic painkiller at a government hospital is a rare treat. Being robbed is the order of the day and reporting that to police is a mere formality because the police have no means to travel to crime scenes. There is a catalogue of things that government need to focus on but seem to choose not to.  With such state of affairs, achieving progress will continue to remain a pipedream. Malawi desperately needs a focused government which will not waste time sugar-coating problems while people are suffering.

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