Amateurish leadership

As I am writing this, one of the brightest minds that this country could ever hope to have is teetering on the brink of death in a South African hospital after a criminal and evil mind sprayed a hellfire of gun bullets on him in a macabre bid to silence him, forever.

Budget director Paul Mphwiyo’s shooting last week had all the hallmarks and signature of a high stakes Mafioso-like game of the underworld hell-bent on sending to an realy grave someone standing in their way. No wonder then that this nation is shocked to its core and Malawians are looking for answers from none other than their President.

But while Malawians expect President Joyce Banda to assure them that Mphwiyo’s shooting was a one-off incident and does not in any way signal breakdown of security or the presence of shadowy characters in her government, it does not reflect well on her when she goes further to say she knows who shot the budget director but falls short of naming and shaming them so that the police should immediately solve this heinous crime.

We know the President gets intelligence briefings from all the security organs of the State, but this does not give her a licence to blurt out nothings anyhow, especially when it comes to sensitive issues such as Mphwiyo shooting which most of the time leaves her officials scampering as they attempt to clean up her mess.

The questions that Malawians are asking are: If the President knew the individuals who ordered the Mphwiyo hit, why did it take the police forever to bring the culprits to book? Why were the police keeping the identities of the people arrested in connection with the crime under lock and key before they appeared in court?

When everything is said and done, this reflects amateurish leadership in the art of State craft and decorum on part of the President that you would almost think she is badly in need of further grooming.

But this should not come as a surprise as crisis handling and taking positions on issues that matter to Malawians has not been the strength of this adminis-tration.

This presidency has merely oscillated between flip-flopping on some issues such as homos-exuality and sometimes outright arrogance on others such as declaration of assets that it is almost becoming a farce.

How can the President say she rules by the rule of law and not public opinion as a response to Public Affairs Committee (PAC) request that she declares how much she owes to Malawians?

This is arrogance in its most brutal form and if I were her adviser, I would tell her to be wary of such statements as they reflect badly on her.

For all his cowboyism and the amassing of K61 billion of dirty money which this government wants to appropriate, former president, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, has got one better on this President. In the very least Malawians were able to know how much Mutharika declared at the beginning of his presidency as he never played funny tricks but allowed the Speaker to give out the information to the public through the media.

Because of this gesture, Malawians are now able to know how he messed them up and moves are being taken by this government and the Judiciary to see how that dubiously acquired obscene wealth can be managed for the benefit of the public.

On the contrary, this President does not even want Malawians to know how much she has and she is doing it in the most arrogant way.

But hers is the amateurish leadership which she is mistakenly calling rule of law.