Burning and looting tonight
There is a song by Bob Marley whose substance includes statements that there will be “burning and looting” tonight. Now, if you have been paying attention to the recent happenings of massive haemorrhaging of government coffers at Capital Hill, you may not doubt that looting has indeed been happening in large quantities. Secondly, if you believe in the theory that the fire that gutted Escom House in Blantyre was a consequence of some individual attempting to cover up their shady deals, then “looting and burning” has finally happened to some of the major institutions of our nation’s landscape.
Allow me to identify that the recent revision of the assets declaration legislation was just one attempt to move in the right direction. But such an attempt is not enough to stem the corruption and looting of government coffers in this country. The second and necessary action that needed to be done was to move forward with the access to information legislation. No Malawian can understand why the government was reluctant to sign the Table Mountain Declaration which would have given an indication that we were committed to free flow of information. How could anyone sign up to a declaration that would have permitted that information relating to things such as Cashgate be revealed? So, the absence of the enabling legislation to allow for access to all relevant government information is not something by chance, but a calculated attempt to hide things such as Cashgate when they happen.
The third thing that I repeat here is the cleaning up of party funding in Malawi. A person I know, but in the DPP, was lamenting how he thought it would be an uphill task to mount a massive electoral campaign for 2014. Why was that, I wanted to know. “Achimwene,” said he, “resources”. He said campaigns were all about resources. “Nangatu pano, sitili m’boma.” (My brother, it would be hard for us to mobilise finances now that we are no longer the ruling party.)
The forth thing that needs to be changed is immunity for the president. If your child is molested by the president, forget it, the president is immune. If the president is caught stealing from your house, forget it, the Constitution says the president can’t be arrested. If the president stabs you with a knife, too bad, you have stabbed yourself, the president can’t be charged for doing that. You can think of any crime that an individual can do, but if that person is the president of Malawi, hey, you are lost, the president is immune. What sort of country gives its leaders a blanket licence to break the law?
I have heard various sorts of people calling for the ouster of Reserve Bank governor Charles Chuka. As far as he is concerned, no wrong doing can be ascribed to the central bank. If Mr Chuka is right, I agree with him to stick it. But that’s where the problem also lies. How come we could have all these cashgate transactions going on without the attention of the central bank?
