Runaway love

From whatever part of the world she was speaking, Joyce Banda is alive and kicking. As we learnt this week, once again, she still finds Malawi ‘lekker’ and will ‘soon’ come back.  

That she will come back home soon was something we were hearing for the umpteenth time it’s not something you can deposit in a bank. Waiting for Banda’s return home at times is akin to news of the arrival of the mythical Godot.

We are heartened to learn, however, that much as she wonders around the globe, our version of Alice in the Wonderland cares.

At least, she cares for her beloved People’s Party (PP). She says she cares for us as well, but that’s subject for debate.

In the week, we further learnt the former president’s trick of keeping a grip on the party: She summons its rankand-file and address them via phone. If some jesters thought the mandasi woman is not as sophisticated, well, swallow your words. She is technologically up-to-date.

Forget the small matter of the K24 billion Cashgate, thanks to that leaked audio; too, we know JB hates corruption.

She cares that Malawians are dying needlessly— thanks to man-made hunger and poverty. We know Banda finds it incomprehensible that some senior government officials can stash millions of cash in their homes. (Sounds familiar?) JB always claimed she was robbed of victory in 2014.

She now has a new arrow to her quiver: the recent Supreme Court ruling that reversed the declaration of DPP contestant in Lilongwe South East Constituency, Bentley Namasasu, as winner.

All this could be true or crap depending on which side of the political fence you are sitting. But still, it doesn’t answer the question why Banda lives in selfimposed exile since she was ousted from power.

She left office, lest it’s overlooked, not through the barrel of the gun but through the ballot as testament to maturity of our democratic systems.

For Banda, to act or claim this country is inhabitable as her actions surely suggests, is an insult to struggling Malawians.

It is also an affront to all those who fought so hard to give this country a chance at democracy in April, 2012 when some dark forces sought to stop her constitutional ascendancy after president Bingu wa Mutharika’s sudden death in office.

Today, why then has this bourgeoning democracy been abandoned by one of its principal beneficiaries? Being president, let’s not mince words, is a privilege which is handsomely rewarding financially and otherwise. Those who get anywhere close to it owe us a great deal of gratitude not platitudes.

For once, I agree with DPP. Banda’s utterances against her successor remain illconceived as long as she is shouting from rooftops in London or Sandton.

Save for the Issa Njauju blip on our psyche, a brutal murder yet to be investigated; our country is not haven for political assassination.

Simply put, I don’t see any threat on the life of the former president as she some times claims.

Let us also refuse the characterization of our country as a lawless State without a judicial system that can fairly and professionally adjudicate any case.

Even if it were the case, it would make little sense for anyone whose blood veins ooze with patriotism to abandon the country as JB has done.

What is obtaining, however, in this saga is a picture of a paranoid former Runaway love president evidently afraid of prosecution, tit-for-tat style, by her sworn nemesis whom she previously jailed when in power.

Whatever else she says is just a vain attempt for cheap sympathy. Let JB come back home as she has continuously pledged.

If she did not commit any crime, the courts of law and courts of public opinion will exonerate her. But probably she must come home to enjoy her retirement in Nkhata Bay or Domasi because her political fortunes don’t look any good.

She has squandered a lot of political capital by abandoning Malawians when every book of the 21st century politics says leaving was bad play.

But if she comes back home and she is arrested on trumped-up charges, just maybe, it will resuscitate her career.

But if she remains holed up in some bunker and prays that when she returns closer to 2019, then Malawians will hail her as a triumphant Jesus of Nazareth entering Jerusalem on top of a donkey, she is in for a big shock. There’s always a stiff price for elopement.