Not so fast on new vision
Judge Mbadwa: Why should Mr Jonah Kapita of the Association of Disgruntled Consumers be filing this application against the decision of Nyasaland’s government to migrate to a new national development plan to replace Vision 2020 instead of the office of the Ombudswoman?
Jonah Kapita: My Lord, Ombudswoman Marita would have taken the issue as per her mandate as evidenced in how she handled the tractorgate issue. But as a citizen, I also have sufficient interest to take to court any issue I feel the citizens’ rights have been infringed upon.
Mbadwa: You can go ahead to present your case Mr Kapita.
Kapita: Thanks, my lord. We want this court to stop the process of establishing a new development plan to replace Vision 2020 before a thorough review of the old vision is done and officers, who made the country lose millions of taxpayers’ money by chaotically handling such a beautiful plan, are taken to account.
It is our submission that the Vision 2020, as a development plan, did not fail, but it was failed by governments and authorities who were managing it. We believe, there was no political will to successfully implement the plan as the political leadership only fostered projects and plans that appealed to the voters and those that would make the politicians rich within a short period at the expense of the poor people.
The vision’s approach, my lord, was a long-term one, something that politicians, who define success in a term of five years, could not stomach.
In essence, the Members of Parliament, ministers and presidents who governed this country during the time the vision should have been operational were the true enemies of the development plan. My lord, they feared that implementing plans whose fruits would be seen when they were long gone, would not be in their best interest as they wrongly construed that others would get credit for projects and plans which were initiated during their time.
These unpatriotic leaders are responsible for the poor performance of the country in all sectors of the economy with their love for short-term solutions. My lord, we will be asking this court at an appropriate time to arraign these selfish leaders for impoverishing Nyasaland.
My lord, the vision clearly stated in its preamble, the significance of having a coordinated development plan, as it agreed that “a miscellaneous group of projects, each unrelated and uncoordinated to a master plan for the development of the economy as a whole, would take a country nowhere and may lead to chaos.”
My lord, the development chaos we feared is self-evident if one wants to check what the country has achieved all these years.
My lord, the people who failed Vision 2020 are still here and most of them are still in politics. Many of them, my lord, have just metamorphosed from one political portfolio to another. The technocrats who dance to the sad tunes of politicians are still salivating at the beck and call of their masters.
The thinking hasn’t changed and the attitude of public servants has even worsened. The country has become more corrupt and we wonder how the National Transformation 2063 would yield result?
My lord, we spent billions of kwacha on the Vision 2020 we failed to implement. It is for this reason that we ask this court to stop the madness until we have taken stock of the fiasco of the Vision 2020 and those people who let this country down are prosecuted. I rest my case.
Mbadwa: I agree that it would be sheer madness to start talking about a new vision when nobody has explained why a beautiful development blueprint was left to gather dust. I hereby order that the Ombudswoman leads in the process of investigating the failure of Vision 2020 and recommend to this court on who should be prosecuted in the matter. n
