Ministerial townhall session fails

What was billed a ministerial question and answer session with the public was cancelled at the eleventh hour in Blantyre yesterday with Minister of Information and Digitisation Moses Kunkuyu taking the blame.

In an interview, he said the event will be rescheduled for next week, but analysts described the move as a postponement of accountability.

Barely hours after President Lazarus Chakwera presided over the John Chilembwe Day celebration in Chiradzulu, a poster made rounds on the social media with a red-letter headline ‘Meet your ministers in a Q&A’. The poster had portraits of the President, the Vice-President and Cabinet ministers.

Catch phrases on the poster read: “Open to the public”, “ask those questions, make those suggestions” and “we are here to serve you!”

The artwork specified the date for the Q&A as Tuesday while time of the meeting was 9am and venue as Malawi Sun Hotel.

However, when journalists and some members of the public arrived at the hotel yesterday morning, it emerged that there was booking for such a meeting.

Kunkuyu said the meeting had been postponed to next week because three ministers who were lined up to be main speakers were tied up with other government engagements.

“That is the reason we have rescheduled the meeting to next week,” he said.

However, while applauding the planned interface between the Cabinet and the general public, governance expert Mabvuto Bamusi described the postponement as unfortunate as it entails postponement of accountability and development.

“There is no justification whatsoever to postpone or cancel such an interface because it takes away people’s right to know how their taxes are being used; after all, collection of taxes is not being postponed,” he said.

This is not the first time the Cabinet has postponed or cancelled a publicised meeting as in 2022 when the then minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe faced controversy over the Affordable Inputs Programme deal, some ministers wanted to clarify the issue through a press conference. However, following a public backlash the meeting was cancelled and Lowe was sacked.