Mkwezalamba is pushing it
Honourable Folks, so the cash-gate is a crisis, uh? International Monetary Fund (IMF) may say so but, by their actions, folks in government see no crisis at all but a normal trend of government operations dating back to the Bingu wa Mutharika, if not Bakili Muluzi, administrations.
Budget director Paul Mphwiyo may have been shot alright, billions may have been siphoned out of public coffers, a junior civil servant may have stolen from government K7.5 million and stashed it in the tummy of a doll, millions may have been withdrawn from government accounts and used to procure buses nobody owns or explains their use but government is nevertheless in denial.
They instead expect credit, arguing that the cases of fraud and corruption coming to the fore now aren’t a manifestation of government failures on public finance management but are the outcome of its relentless effort to fight graft.
Government has taken its anti-corruption propaganda offensive to another level by incinerating money in hard currency, engaging an international public relations consultant to spruce up its battered image in the eyes of the international community.
Back home, government has made few arrests here and there and an earlier-than-normal calling of Parliament to discuss the cash-gate. The President also made some largely cosmetic changes to the Cabinet. In addition, new Finance Minister Maxwell Mkwezalamba came up with some expenditure control measures which included restricting the so-called government-sponsored travel.
Boy, isn’t the new broom in Finance having his face in the clouds! Last Saturday, the President was off to the United Arab Emirates as the Vice-President Khumbo Kachali, was in Sri Lanka. Lie to me, I beg of you, that our cash-strapped government didn’t spend, and in hard currency for that matter, on these expensive trips.
As for local travel, it will really be dreaming to even think the President and Vice-President can slow down on their expensive campaign rallies now when the 2014 Tripartite Elections are only months away.
Actually, the President said in Ntchisi, a day after Mkwezalamba’s ban, that she can’t stop travelling because her bosses (real voters) are not at State House but out there in villages.
Mkwezalamba may be a thoroughbred economist who knows what to do to clear the cash-gate mess, but I’m afraid, as long as the cuts are on the expenditure side, he’s pushing it too far and may end up with hypertension induced by frustration.
One major impediment to change in our Republic has always been the lack of political will on the part of our elected leaders to die a little for our sake. Nothing that takes away the warmth of their comfort zone is acceptable even if the deprivation of their sweating in winter is meant to save the people who elected them from freezing to death.
Take the President, for example. Her government can hardly provide half the money required to ensure the police are able to do patrols and respond swiftly to crime or accidents, yet whenever the President goes out of the State House, not only does she move with so many police vehicles on her motorcade but there are also police officers waiting by the roadside for the return of HE. At what cost?
I still remember vividly a picture from Scotland the other day showing our President, who had gone there with a begging bowl, having somebody holding an umbrella for her when the donor, the head of government there, was holding his own umbrella. Who should be displaying opulence?
I also recall during the time of Muluzi, a US diplomat remarking in private how ironic it was that he flew economy when going for the Paris Club meeting as representatives of the poor country, whose case he was there to defend, were perched in Business Class, spending 50 percent or more than him on a ticket.
Paul Kagame may have dealt with that warped mentality in Rwanda and the benefits are there for all to see, but in Malawi, reforms are acceptable if they are a burden on the taxpayer, not the fat-cats at the Capital Hill.
Probably, Mkwezalamba could think about reducing further allocations to drugs, security, education or, better still, cleverly double or even treble the price for government goods and services. After all, his predecessor Dr. Ken Lipenga, while presenting this year’s national budget, told us to go and have our sweet tooth for government subsidies extracted.
If Mkwezalamba could come up with economic argument for hiking police reports, passports, driving licences, even school fees several times over, his colleagues and bosses will be smiling ear to ear.
They will make sure tough guy Brown Mpinganjira, who made a name during the wasted years of mediocrity when UDF was in government, is there to threaten with treason whoever dare suggest those entrusted with sovereign authority have lost the plot and citizens must come up with Plan B.
