On Liz Truss, Lobin Lowe
News is just coming in that the British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned, barely 46 days after getting to the helm. She goes down in history as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in Britain.
This comes a week after her Finance Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Karteng also resigned in what followed a policy change gone awry.
Her government ignited fire in the British economy, leading to the sterling pound crushing to a record low, with the markets crushing at high speed.
Currently, a new leader for the Conservative Party will be chosen, according to her, by next week and the rumour mill is already indicating Boris Johnson may be looking for a return. Johnson himself resigned in July, ending his three-year premiership.
Forget about the musanditopetse mannerisms when Truss was announcing her quitting, but care more about the spirit in sticking to principles and calling it quits when it becomes evidently clear that things have gone critically wrong.
Remember, resigning does not exist in the Malawian way of life when we mess up.
You cannot resign in Malawi when you lead corporations entrusted with the power to supply or generate electricity but are supplying and generating blackout day in day out.
It is not a virtue to resign as head of the energy regulating body and tell that the primary indication of an eminent fuel shortage were simply the result of a music performance and a football match. Yet, two months down the line, the problem is nowhere near the end.
One could go on to expose how far and wide we go as a people to stick to positions we are not capable to run.
That as it may be, it is apparent that Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe has some invisibly great power and influence that even President Lazarus Chakwera can’t dare touch him. That comes since Lowe himself is going nowhere.
In fact, on April 11 this year Chakwera told Lowe point blank that if this year’s Agriculture Inputs Programme (AIP) was not set by September, he would have no option but to replace him. This is October, but look, Chakwera is nowhere near firing Lowe. He is untouchable.
Instead of making Chakwera proud by acting on AIP, all we hear are scandals after scandals on the programme. The Parliamentary Agriculture Committee chairperson Sameer Suleiman the other day revealed that there was speculation the delays are a result of K30 billion which has been lost. To shoot it down, the ministry came out to say it wasn’t K30 billion but K750 million. In that refutal, the ministry further alleged the UK-firm contracted to supply some of the fertiliser had terminated the contract even before the supply.
How government arrived at awarding the contract to a dubious firm remains an enigma. That is in as much it is enigmatic that Lowe is still in his position even where government money grew wings under his very nose.
The rain clouds are gathering and playing around with agricultural production is digging one’s own political grave.
It is under Lowe as minister that we have also seen the closure of grain trader Admarc. Just after the closure, the price of maize rose from around K17 000 to K22 000!
Since he took office, Lowe has proved to be a good jive talker as well, promising agricultural transformation with nothing to show off on the ground. The only tangible thing one can remember from him is painting some sculptures outside his office at Capital Hill. Whoever infused in him that Malawians needed sculptures of cattle and goats must be misguided.
