Praise for APM’s frugal travel; BT welcomes own Bloomberg
It is almost two months now since President Peter Mutharika was sworn in as Head of State.
Within a similar period in 2012, the then president Joyce Banda—who was in May this year voted out of State House literally kicking and screaming—had already travelled to South Africa, Mozambique, United Kingdom (UK) and I can’t remember where else. Within a similar period, Mrs. Banda had already criss-crossed the country attending to mundane jobs, opening a little bit of this, launching a little bit of that, dishing our little goodies and presiding over non-descript events.
Everywhere she went, her entourage of Cabinet ministers was always in tow and her then vice-president Khumbo Kachali never missed her side like a little puppy wagging its tail for the mistress. She was everywhere, yet nowhere.
Her face was bombarding our television screens everyday and her shrilling voice was the unwanted, but persistently daily visitor to our ears from radios.
When Malawians complained that the presidency was travelling a lot, her cheeky deputy, Kachali, retorted: “Ka nkhwenda pa mryangu wa nyoko!” meaning I do not visit your mothers’ homes, so why are you concerned about the presidency’s frequent travels?
Indeed, unbeknown to us all, some civil servants and their private sector gangs were looting the Treasury while the presidency was away all the time.
In short, Mrs. Banda’s was a presidency on the road, constantly attracting undue attention to itself, bathing in the glory of exposure, self-praise and international adoration emanating from the romantic story of only the second African woman to lead a country, never mind that presidency was accidental, not entirely earned.
Fast-forward to today, President Mutharika has not crossed his country’s borders as Head of State, never travelled recklessly locally and appear not to have any interest in listening to his own voice or gawk at his own face on State broadcasters or private electronic media.
Reading himself in print and staring at his own pictures in national newspapers or online does not seem to excite him as much as his predecessors.
When Mutharika appears in public, it is to perform a really important task that can only be done by the Head of State such as officially opening a session of Parliament, presiding over Independence Anniversary celebrations, swearing in of his Cabinet ministers and welcoming foreign leaders, among other rare public appearances he has squeezed in.
President Mutharika has shown that he understands the meaning of delegation—dispatching his vice Saulos Chilima where other presidents would have rushed in and sending ministers in some cases to represent him.
This is a breath of fresh air that must be encouraged and I hope he continues on this path.
Of course, the expectation is that the President spends most of his time in office working hard for Malawians, not taking frequent naps throughout the day and merely chatting up his new wife as doing so would be worse than his predecessors’ daily road shows.
On a different note, Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre City, has a new mayor in the name of high flying private practice lawyer Noel Chalamanda, 39, who came into the parlour on an independent ticket.
Even as he announced his councillorship candidacy, most people correctly guessed that he was eying the mayor’s chair. How he would pull that off without the backing of a political party, nobody knew, but it appears the man knew what he was doing.
He won the support of his colleagues in ‘City Hall’ with a landslide, beating even a ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate.
Chalamanda forces me to draw parallels with Michael Bloomberg—the billionaire business mogul and philanthropist—who became mayor of New York City and run it for 12 years until December 2013, although the two did not come into office in exactly the same fashion.
Bloomberg was a Democrat before seeking elective office, but switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican.
However, he left the Republican Party in 2007 after winning his second term and secured a third term in 2009 on an independent party ticket.
But if you follow Bloomberg’s policy positions, his views have neither been typically Democrat nor Republican. He has always been a centrist politician with moderate views—an independent throughout his life.
Chalamanda, on the other hand, has never been affiliated to any political party and is an ‘independent’ Mayor right from the beginning.
Nonetheless, both Bloomberg and Chalamanda appear to have inherited a heap of problems. Bloomberg found a city grappling with the effects of September 11 terrorist attacks; in fact, as he walked into the mayor’s office, the World Trade Centre had barely recovered, the city’s budget was in the red and business in the world’s commercial capital was in disarray.
At the end of his term last year, Bloomberg left a budget surplus, business was booming again and New York City was a much attractive place to live in.
Chalamanda inherits one of the dirtiest cities in the world and comes at a time the so-called commercial city has very little commerce to write home about and its finances are in tatters.
So, will rank outsider Chalamanda—our own Michael Bloomberg—bring back Blantyre to its former glory?
He has five years.
