PAC, court APM as well
Greetings from the Munda wa Chitedze Farm where I relocated from the hustle and bustle of your city. Peace, and only peace, reigns supreme on the farm and its surrounding areas.
So you see, the quasi-religious Public Affairs Committee (PAC) met President Lazarus Chakwera at the Kamuzu Palace. The religious leaders raised many pertinent issues which need real time reaction from the leadership.
The meeting came at a time the silence from this body was so defeaning, at a time Malawians were gasping for breath under the yoke of economic woes.
Their points are clear: the Chakwera administration must work to make Malawians’ lives better, work more on the fight against corruption, avoid promoting political intolerance and so much more. We can’t agree more.
Dear Diary, as we are tending the chitedze crop, which is more promising than the tobacco, we ponder and chew upon that PAC meet, with a few issues coming to mind. You see, small specks are seen on snow!
Talking of specks, while PAC was removing the specks in Chakwera’s eye, quoting the Bible on how wounds from a friend are better than kisses from a foe, the religious leaders forgot the log in their own eyes.
It is a foregone fact that the current PAC executive members led by Monsignor Patrick Thawale have outlived their constitutional stay. They only have to thank that obscure Article 15.4 of their constitution that allows them to carry out their duties beyond their mandate for ‘continuity’ in the absence of an election.
Since their election in December 2019, the leaders were supposed to hold office for three years. Yet, until now they continue lording over it.
This puts to question their preaching a message of good governance. This extended stay undermines the very governance base they lectured Chakwera on.
As a matter of fact, PAC loses the moral ground to preach the gospel of democracy since skirting around the issue of leadership succession undermines the tenets of people power.
He that seeks equity, they say, must come with clean hands. The PAC hands are quite dirty on this one.
Apart from courting Chakwera, our leaders better be thinking about bringing together all sides to iron out where they are also falling short in their duties to make life better for the Malawian at Hewe in Rumphi, Kunenekude in Mwanza and kwa Muhasuwa in Chiradzulu, not forgetting Golomoti in Dedza.
PAC has done it before, by organising an all-inclusive stakeholeders’ conference which mostly comes before their annual general meeting.
For that matter, PAC should have also sought an audience with DPP president Peter Mutharika at Page House in Mangochi. They had a similar tête-à- tête with the former Malawi leader in 2022.
Dear Diary, meeting APM is vital since there have been areas where his party has failed perfectly in making Malawi better. For one, his party has failed to critically play its role as the leading opposition party. You see, instead of making the rest of us see them as a government-in-waiting, and offering tangible solutions to the problems we are facing, they have been rocked in unnecessary bickering and in-fighting.
It needs no reminder of how they dwelt on a debacle on the Leader of Opposition position. Remember how at one point both Kondwani Nankhumwa and Mary Navicha were ‘leaders of opposition’. It later emerged that George Chaponda won the position in all the hullabaloo.
While Chakwera has received the blame for the panga-wielding hooligans who incited fear on peaceful demonstrators in Lilongwe among other acts of violence, PAC must sit APM down in peace and ask him to tame some of his leaders, whose tongues are inciting violence and sowing seeds of discord that may end in tears.
Not long ago, Mulanje Bale parliamentarian Victor Musowa sowed the wind of violence when he told Ndirandeans to tear apart anyone who goes to the populous township and shout kwacha. Is there any wonder that on Chilembwe Day women donning MCP party cloth were undressed in the populous township?
And, PAC has the moral obligation to remind APM that he has a fight to show Malawians that he too was slow to act, even as Minister of Education. Around 2011, there was a fuel crisis during the reign of his brother Bingu wa Mutharika. A political science lecturer, Blessings Chisinga in a class pointed out that what was happening could lead to a replica of the Arab Springs Uprising.
What followed was an academic freedom struggle, championed by the likes of Jessie Kabwila, whose passport was not renewed for that fight.
In essence, PAC has a moral obligation to remind Mutharika that he that seeks equity must come with clean and open hands.
Dear Diary, peace, only peace, reigns supreme at the Munda wa Chitedze Farm.