Political parties on the opposition side in Parliament have come under fire for their purported failure to provide checks and balances to the Executive between 2019 and 2025.
But the opposition, while acknowledging the shortfalls, has attributed its performance to several factors, including lack of numerical strength in Parliament.
In separate interviews, political and accountability pundits faulted the opposition for failing to stop the K67 billion allocation to State Residences in the K8 trillion 2025/26 National Budget as well as failing to expose culprits in the fertiliser and fuel procurement sagas and linking people’s suffering to the September 16 General Election instead of providing solutions.
In a written response yesterday, political analyst Wonderful Mkhutche said it beats conscience to see that the K67 billion allocated to State Residences is almost the same as that for maize purchases and more than the allocation to Ministry of Mining.
He said: “The opposition was supposed not to allow the government to sacrifice people’s lives, or the country’s strategic investment over the lavishness of State Residences.
“They should have been in the forefront recruiting other budgetary stakeholders to pressure the government to rethink this allocation. But, as usual, they were passive.”
Governance expert George Chaima said only a few individuals from the opposition side stood up and exposed some internal threats to democracy and smooth governance systems.
“The government took advantage of the weak opposition to survive the chop. We have had the worst government ever because the weakest opposition also makes the worst government,” he said.
University of Malawi expert in legislative and electoral politics Gift Sambo said Malawi needs a strong opposition numerically to effectively check the Executive.
He said: “It [the opposition] was lacking in terms of numerical strength to effectively check proposals that were deemed irrational from the perspective of a significant number of stakeholders.
“With more independent MPs siding with government, it is always difficult for the opposition to make the much needed changes. We also hear of money exchanging hands to pass government business, and that worsens the situation.”
On his part, accountability expert Willy Kambwandira said the current opposition will go down in history as one that presided over several government scandals, and failed to keep government in check.
He said: “The opposition parties generally resembled barking dogs-loud in criticism but ineffective in action. They offered political noise with little substance instead of critical oversight.”
Leader of Opposition in Parliament George Chaponda had not responded to our questionnaire by press time at 8pm yesterday, but leader of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Parliament Ned Poya conceded that they did not perform as required.
“It was a learning process because when you have a government in majority, they pass whatever they want. You might have good ideas, proposals, but if numbers are not on your side, things don’t go well,” he said.
Poya also claimed that during the time opposition legislators cried for maize in the Southern Region, much of that was ironically sent to the Central Region due to a numerically strong government side.
“Even on the K67 billion State Residence budget, even though we spoke about if, nothing changed because once the Minister of Finance does not want to change the figures, nothing will happen,” he said.
During the 2019 Tripartite Elections, Democratic Progressive Party won 62 seats followed by Malawi Congress Party with 55 as did independents. UDF got 10 seats, People’s Party won five, UTM Party took four and Alliance for Democracy had one.
