Cry the beloved voter

November 23 2023

Dear Diary, like I always say, I forsake some temptations that I don’t succumb to when putting pen to paper for you. Primarily, I don’t want to belabour you with tired subjects. Secondly, I don’t want to write to you about things that can’t be changed because those addressed are adamant to the core. Thirdly, for the sake of peace and tranquility, progress and order, I don’t fall for temptations to abuse time addressing such marginal issues.

I will tell you what. The temptation this week was to write how useless today that much as President Lazarus Chakwera announced cuts in his foreign trips, allocations to his Cabinet ministers and government officials’ fuel and other cuts, it would make little sense if at all this is to cushion the pain Malawians on the street are feeling due to the devaluation of the kwacha.

And then, Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola-Banda announced in Parliament when he presented the Mid-Term Budget review on Monday that from the fuel allocation cuts, the government would save K40 billion until March. The saved money, he said, would go into the mega farms drive.

Now, for me that is quite an obscure diversion. This, I say, because much as we have seen a number of ‘mega farms’ making it big with the mega farms initiative, one would wonder where exactly the K40 billion would go!

Such obscure budgetary allocation is prone to abuse.

And then, the temptation was, again, to say that we are slowly losing the plot in the anti-corruption drive. It is, I repeat, becoming more of the same talk show.

Figure this, we have an Anti-corruption Day in December every year. This year, we had silver jubilee celebrations. And to cement that 25-year celebration we had aerobics in Mzuzu. As if that were not enough, there was a football match between Silver Strikers and Blue Eagles to spread the anti-corruption word. Then, just this morning, President Chakwera and other dignitaries were in Lilongwe to close a two-day symposium on corruption.

If the signing of an MoU for a lifestyle audit would really mean a thing in the corruption fight, did we really need some two days of top government officials away from their day-to-day duties to some hall?

In all this, I feel for the struggles of the voter. I feel for the voter who with all confidence dropped the ballot paper thinking that Chakwera would change the way government business would take an about-turn in the way it was run in past regimes.

I feel for this voter who will be asked to go back to the polling booth with faces gleaming with hope in 2025 to host in new leaders. I cry that beloved voter who will be coaxed to queue again with the age-old adage that people who don’t vote usher in bad leaders.

Is it not the other way round: People who vote usher in bad leaders?

It is a matter of choice: To vote or not to vote. In fact, the freedom to choose is a Constitutional right. No one can force you, if you feel it is not necessary. On the question of ushering in bad leaders or not, that is a predestined affair.

Dear Diary, I cry more for the beloved voter because they always end crying the most, whether their best candidate loses or their worst candidate wins.

They cry the most even when their best candidate wins but does not live up to their expectation. It’s like a bet, against all odds!

Look at it this way. The MCP government (remember the ballot paper indicated Chakwera as the MCP candidate with Saulos Chilima as running mate, nothing about the Tonse Alliance) is running things badly, but that does not make the DPP any better. We saw their rule and their misrule to judge if they are a better lot or not.

I cry for the tobacco farmer at Chamama in Kasungu, the maize farmer at Kasiya in Lilongwe, the tea picker at Mimosa in Mulanje, the sugarcane farmer on the precincts of Nchalo Sugar Estates in Chikwawa and the ones cultivating tomatoes, pigeon peas and chillies in Thyolo, not forgetting the coffee farmers of Misuku in Chitipa. These are the foreign exchange earners for this country who rise early to vote for brighter days.

I cry for them, because as they start in September 2024 lining up to register for the votes, they will be feeling the pinch of hard economic times since every tambala of the forex in the national coffers, and the taxes they pay through the nose, will have been guzzled through imported ‘big’ cars by the powers that be. To vote, or not to vote, is the big question that makes me cry for these voters.