No to jet, stay home Mr. President
Hon. Folks, the whiplash reaction to APM spin-doctor’s use of the president’s woes when he flew commercial to Malta recently as proof for the need to purchase or hire of a private jet shows a change in the trend of thought towards the presidency.
Remember the time when Kamuzu Banda hired a jumbo jet from Namibia, painted it Malawi colours and used it for a trip to the UK where it was kept in the hanger for a month?
It’s the trip where his entourage was filmed moving in large groups, doing wild shopping in Comet and other shops, sweeping everything electronic—hi-fi equipment, refrigerators, electric kettles, cameras, pressing irons, radios, TV boxes and video recorders, etc.
They spent big in the UK, to the extent of being noticed by paparazzi at the expense of the poor Malawian taxpayer.
No questions were asked, at least not openly. Instead, we, the short-changed, dutifully converged in “large numbers” on the airport with smiles painted on our wailing faces, singing and gyrating, praising such a wasteful president for his “dynamic, pragmatic and foresighted leadership.”
That’s how dehumanising the one-party dictatorship was! The public was required to serve and account to the leader. Demanding transparency and accountability was taboo.
Under the multiparty dispensation, many questions on good governance are asked everyday and frugality in many areas demanded. But something untoward still lingers on in the presidency—mystery and the inexplicable heavy sacrifices that go with it.
Since the Bakili Muluzi era, the one area of the national Budget that gets generous funding even in hard economic times is State Residences. To the best of my knowledge, this also happens to be an area characterised by over-expenditure and, although we have the statutes in place, no responsible controlling officer has been held to account. Talk about leading by example!
Another cost-centre related to the presidency is the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC). Every president that emerges recreates the OPC in their image.
Who in the public sector can question, let alone expose the rot in an office associated with the President and Cabinet, the Executive?
But the civil society, having been given a raw deal by the fat-cats in government for over 50 years, is now doing a good job, scrutinising what’s going on in every organ of government, including the presidency.
A good example is the bluff they quickly detected and pointed out in the official narrative that followed the story about APM’s luggage missing as he was connecting flights on his way to Malta for the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting (Chogm).
Chief Advisor to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr. Collins Magalasi, used the occasion to us feel it’s not right for the President to fly commercial! We’d just bashed APM for blowing our money on a hired jet and going to UN summit with many hangers on, remember?
But hold it there. What’s more urgent, the comfort and convenience for the President or the welfare of the 17 million Malawians living in excruciating poverty and deprivation every day?
Our economy, expected to grow by 5.1 percent, was recently revised downwards by IMF to 3.3 percent and now the World Bank has further recast the gross domestic product (GDP) downwards to 2.8 percent.
Fees for secondary school and university are way beyond the reach of the rural poor who make up 85 percent of the population; patients in the grossly underfunded public hospitals have to forego meals.
Under such circumstance, one would have expected the Malawi leadership to borrow a leaf from Tanzania’s newly elected president, John Pombe Magufuli, who’s become Africa’s overnight sensation for his frugality and business unusual tendencies.
Best way forward is for the president isn’t to fly hired jet, let alone buy private one but to slow down on these foreign trips. Let the diplomats and other government officials do their work out there while our president is right here with us to appreciate our suffering and take a hands-on approach, fixing our woes.n
