No leadership, no inspiration

Listening to President Joyce Banda’s altercation with journalists who braved the hostile environment of PP hand-clappers at Sanjika Palace on Wednesday, I was left with the impression that she is well aware that the ongoing Capital Hill looting party is a stinker that her administration could have done without.

But what she pathetically failed to show is the leadership and inspiration to Malawians that she is up to the task of rooting out the endemic corruption and fraud at Capital Hill that has reached alarming levels on her watch.

Her communication strategy to Malawians is simple to decipher: blame everybody in the past as being responsible for the mess but minus herself and her close band of confidants that include ministers and other top government officials when the reality is clear that fraud of this magnitude could not have been perpetrated by only junior officers in the Ministry of Finance.

And even if it were so, the Finance Minister Ken Lipenga and her top officials cannot completely insulate themselves from the scandal as they are supposed to provide the oversight role which they clearly did not. Why they are still in their positions, your guess can only be as good as mine.

But rest assured that it is only in Malawi where public officials refuse to take responsibility over the mess of their departments and hang on to their positions like malnourished lice on a bloodless decimated body.

Let us, for the sake of argument, accept that corruption among public officials has been rife for the past 20 years across all administrations. The question that the President must answer is what has been the common feature across the UDF, DPP and PP governments?

If she is honest, she will realise that it is the same group of ministers, party officials and even civil servants who have changed colours over the years to join government gravy train at every turn. My point is to accept that corruption has been rife in the years gone past but Malawians are not stupid not to know that it has been presided over by the same people who have prostituted themselves to these various administrations.

PP is a ragtag band consisting of mostly individuals that formed past administrations. The President should, therefore, not think that by apportioning blame she is doing herself justice because the people she is with are the same people that served the past administrations which she is demonising today. Was she also not part of UDF and DPP?

When everything is said, done and dusted, the President must accept responsibility for today’s problems and provide the necessary leadership and workable solutions. And on evidence of what has happened so far, she has not provided such leadership. On the contrary, she continues to refuse to make her declaration of assets public by hiding behind the silence of the law that this time she is prepared to play a gender card, arguing those forcing her to do this are merely doing so because she is a woman. I do not need to waste newspaper space arguing how pathetic this line is. Suffice to say her two predecessors, Bakili Muluzi and Bingu wa Mutharika, with or without their gender, did not stop efforts to make their wealth declarations public despite the existence of the same Assets Declaration law the President is using to hide hers. This act is cue enough among public officials to act with impunity and steal taxpayers money in broad day light. There is no leadership and inspiration in Joyce Banda. I certainly did not hear any that Wednesday afternoon.