A politician’s wishful thinking

Is Malawi ready to go back 20 years to yesteryears of one-party rule? JAMES CHAVULA writes.

Locals in Machinjiri Township, Blantyre, remember People’s Party (PP) secretary general Henry Chibwana disappearing from their midst as murmurs emerged that president Bingu wa Mutharika had died last year. Those who live in the neighbourhood of his humble residence in Area 7 of the sprawling suburb township of Blantyre vividly recall seeing him reappear in a government-owned chauffeur-driven 4X4, one of the trappings of power which are synonymous with self-styled ‘very important politicians’ and other important people in Malawi, where 52 percent of its population is grappling with poverty.

Ever since he has been spending more time in the capital Lilongwe than his retirement home and his neighbours are getting used to seeing him on the State-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) as he hops from one district to another in the shadow of President Joyce Banda’s endless travels which have come under question as the country struggles with austerities and other economic recovery measures handed down from Capital Hill.

But after slightly over a year in the ruling party, Chibwana last week found himself hogging headlines for what law Professor Edge Kanyongolo calls the “most outlandish statement in years”.

In the untamed thinking of the governing party’s executive leader, the country is better off going back to a one-party system and he could not hide his contempt for the multiparty dispensation Malawians elected in the nationwide referendum on June 14 1993 when he welcomed two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators—Lilongwe South West’s Fredrick Mwangala and Lilongwe City South East’s Agness Penemulungu—to PP last week.

Chibwana, a no mean beneficiary of pluralistic politics, told the crowd in Lilongwe:  “There is nothing wrong to have a one-party State provided the one party is doing the best thing for the people.”

His might have been mere overtures of a party mouthpiece rejoicing in landing new recruits from its archenemy or a sheer overstated stunt to stress that opposition parties can do better than what he called “opposing for the sake of opposing”, but it could as well help lift the thick curtain to the graver misconceptions, hypocrisy and incompatibilities that guide politicians entrusted with steering multiparty Malawi to greater levels of political pluralism and diversity.

The tragedy with Chibwana’s thinking does not lie in the subtle assumption that it is easy to rewind the hands of time and take the country to the grim days in which it was wallowing before the 1993 referendum, but that it comes from a top power broker in a party responsible for running State affairs.

According to Kanyongolo, there is no easy road to transport the country back to one party-rule—for it would need a national referendum to amend the Constitution which safeguards the aspirations Malawians had when they went to polls in the historic wind of change that overwhelmingly uprooted 31 years of founding president Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s one-party rule.

“Some of the sections to be amended are 12 and 41. [But] this is the most outlandish statement I have heard over the years,” said Kanyongolo, a legal expert from University of Malawi’s Chancellor College.

PP deputy spokesperson Ken Msonda might have moved with speed to clarify that it is wrong to mistake his superior’s uncanny statement for the ruling party’s stand, but separating politicians from their positions of power can never be difficult when a secretary general uses a party podium to air his views.

Grabbing the dilemma Chibwana creates by taking it upon himself to say things that are not in line with the aspirations of his party as well as the citizenry, United Democratic Front (UDF) spokesperson Ken Ndanga said the opposition party is dismayed by Chibwana’s remarks because the one-party rule subjected Malawians to a long time of “varied atrocities” and reverting to the system is the “last thing any reasonable politician would suggest”.

A press statement issued by Ndanga says: “The party [UDF] is particularly concerned that the statement is coming from the secretary general of a governing party.”

This aptly contextualises the issue, for Ndanga’s party in 2002 failed to secure even an open term for its founding leader Bakili Muluzi because Malawians are steadfast in the belief that their country is nobody’s estate and no leader is good enough to rule forever.

Since the genesis of democracy, the country has been frantic with cunning political leaders who drive their care-free lieutenants to leak their mundane feelings on rather serious matters just to test public perception on infamous policy shifts in the offing.

Msonda categorically distances President Banda from nursing the idea to turn Malawi into a one-party State. But what is surprising is why Chibwana could utter such a careless statement.

As principal of University of Malawi’s Polytechnic, Chibwana’s reign was infamous for strikes, sit-ins and other forms of protests that proponents of Kamuzu’s autocratic rule usually seize to highlight the adverse effects of the multiparty system.

But deification could be the making of another Kamuzu—a dictator who ruled with impunity for 31 years.

President Banda is renowned for scrapping off a bulk of bad laws and policy changes she inherited from Mutharika’s ill-fated dictatorship, save for the abandonment of the one-time Freedom Day in memory of the June 14 1993, which was ironically replaced with a holiday in honour of Kamuzu’s birthday on May 4. By idolising the figure Malawians rejected almost unanimously 20 years ago, the PP administration positions itself as accomplice to contempt of the sacrifices that paved the road to democracy.

The scrapping off of a holiday recognising a national feat in preference of a solely personal landmark is nothing strange in an era predominated by politicians  who trace their footprints to Kamuzu’s solo show spanning from 1963 to 1994.

This constitutes one of the major crises of the country’s democracy, according to former vice-president Justin Malewezi.

“Our first challenge is that we created democracy without creating democrats. We used democracy to change government, but it is the same people running the affairs,” said Malewezi in March.

Recently, political analyst Joseph Chunga affirmed:  “Talking about 20 years of democracy, most leaders are not socialised to uphold values of democracy.”

One of the basic principles of democracy is periodic elections to weigh the electorate’s perception of their leaders, a concept which does not preclude the existence of alternative political parties.

When Malawians voted for multiparty politics, they desired change. We Have a Dream—an Episcopal Conference of Malawi Pastoral Letter coming 31 years after the inaugural How to Build a Happy Nation in 1991 and just a year after, 1992’s Living Our Faith—shows that while some changes have already taken place, many more challenges lie ahead.

In the March 1994 epistle, the catholic bishops foresaw it all: A ruling party falling into the temptation so that it should remain indefinitely the only party to rule.

“If one party is so strong and the others are so weak as to be unable to present an alternative, no change is possible,” warned the bishops in the Pastoral Letter prior to the first presidential and parliamentary election which replaced Kamuzu with UDF’s Bakili Muluzi.

Even with Malawi Forum for Unity and Development (Mafunde) president George Mnesa exposing how Finance Minister Ken Lipenga embellished the figures to sugar-coat Mutharika’s zero-deficit budget as well as how the presidency overstretched its powers to ensure Legacy wins the contract to run the Presidential Hotel in Lilongwe, the likes of Chibwana seem obsessed to divert Malawians attention from what the bishops noted in their gracious meditations: the opposition by nature have an essential role to play—providing checks and balances to the ruling party.

Although Chibwana has since resigned from his position in PP, unless he explains in vivid terms how multiparty politics has impoverished or profited him, even his neighbours in Machinjiri believe in having a diversity of parties from which they can choose leaders who share the vision come May 20 2014.  None of the President’s achievements—safe motherhood, enhanced relations with donors and Mudzi Trust—are good enough to erode that dream.