Emily Mkamanga

Politics of nonsense

Recently, Vice-President Dr. Saulos Chilima gave a well-attended talk at BICC in Lilongwe.  The topic of the talk was Mindset Change.  Since the attendance was very good, including the presence of President Lazarus Chakwera, it was a sign that the topic came at the right time and most people liked it.  The fact that questions were allowed at the end of the speech is turned out to be a very useful discussion.  This was even more so when President Chakwera crowned the discussion with some more comments.

The speech by the main presenter, Vice-President Chilima touched on a number of things pertaining to the meaning of change in government.  He said that there is a real need for a changed mindset in order to make the change in government meaningful.  He was very right. In fact, if people in the civil service and those in parastatals want to continue working as they were doing in the previous government, the much-needed change will just be a mere wishful thought.

When President Mutharika decisively lost to President Chakwera in the rerun election of June 2020, people working in his government, including the DPP members and supporters were not happy at all.  Some could not even imagine to work for Chakwera’s government.  Probably retaliating for the loss was the way forward by showing defiance in following the rules of change by Chakwera government.  To such people even government review program by the Vice-President means nothing.  It can be said that the enemies of change want the Tonse Alliance government to fail like the previous government.  Just imagine Malawians are already feeling betrayed about accessing cheap fertilizer.  The people in charge have made the process difficult.  This might be deliberate to show that the Chakwera government has failed.  For goodness sake it does not make sense for either President Chakwera or Veep Chilima to physically get involved in distributing farm inputs when there are people available to do the job.  Meanwhile, behind the scenes people might be complaining that Chakwera is taking too long in his process of cleaning the rubble which must include getting rid of people who are not very willing to work in his government and are literally the enemies of change or development.

It is so disheartening to note that some people deliberately want to show that the current government is incompetent.  The story of massive leakage of Form Four examinations papers is unbelievable.  The government has provided all the facilities including security.  Just because someone does not wish the Chakwera government well, exam leakage had to be done to annoy the people of Malawi and probably rise against the government.  Such habits are amongst what Vice-President Chilima described as politics of nonsense.

So far Malawians note that both Chakwera and Chilima are working together in harmony to deliver change.  This was never the case in the past government whereby there was total hatred between the President and his Vice.  Surprisingly, Chilima said at his presentation that he had noticed that there are people who do not want to work closely with the President.  He once again called this as politics of nonsense.  In fact, dividing these two leaders will yield nothing as benefit to the people of Malawi.  The other politics of nonsense was what people experienced during the DPP era when the party had a militia called cadets.  In fact, the country has enough security from the MDF and police.  Therefore, party militia becomes irrelevant.

Lastly, it goes without saying that wasting time with politics of nonsense just delays development.  Politics of nonsense is not an alternative for getting power.

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