Thanks Joyce Banda, MBC free at last
The 2014 elections are over. We, Sheikh Jean-Philipp LePoisson, Abiti Joyce Befu, MG 66, Innocett Mawayawaya, Native Authority and I pray that a similar nerve-racking election scenario should not happen again. Even though TB Joshua has failed to pray so that the world locates where the 250 girls Nigerian abducted by Boko Haram, we will still invoke his occasional luck that he prays that a similar electoral fiasco should never happen again in Malawi.
Everybody agrees, except the winners, of course, that the 2014 election will go down in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most shambolic elections in the world. Despite that we must accept that the election produced winners and losers.
Since you already know the losers, we will dwell on the winners. The biggest winner is Joyce Banda. We will tell you why in due course. For now, let’s be contented that is election horribris is in our past; another dent on our national history. As the second biggest winner, President Bingu, sorry, Arthur Peter, sorry, Peter Arthur Mutharika, has pleaded with Malawians, we must forget about our political divisions and try to move ahead. Let’s go back to work, earn enough money to pay enough taxes so that Account Number One is full for the government runs and Cashgate, covert like the K92 billion of the Bingu wa Mutharika administration or overt like the K13 billion of the Joyce Banda administration, continues.
Despite the sad times we went through during the electoral period, we must resurrect, President Mutharika has urged us. Indeed we must get out of the political morgue and support President Mutharika who has promised a lot of good programmes and policies. If half of them can be implemented before 2019, Malawi and Malawians will have laid a robust foundation for future Malawians.
We ask President Peter Arthur Mutharika to urgently and seriously read his older brother’s book, The African Dream, and implement a few policies from there.
If President Mutharika (please don’t call him professor anymore) is too busy to read or if he already read his brother’s massive book but can no longer remember the contents, we are ready to summarise the book for him. Of course, this will be at a Malawian fee. Quid pro quo. That is what we have learned from our legal brothers, sisters and cousins.
In modern Malawi there is nothing for nothing. The 2014 election injunctiongate was motivated by something beyond legalism. Quid pro quo. Mbongo. Even voters get paid to vote properly. Those who pay the voters less (you know them now), will receive less votes. Voters call this pragmatic practice, dyeratu, because elected politicians never get back to the voters until the next campaign period.
We like President Mutharika because we like the idea of community colleges. Actually, we suggested sometime back that to solve the space problem in public universities, technical and teachers colleges should be turned into university colleges and MSCE candidates who perform well enough should be selected thereto. Qualified teachers should be located there. The graduates from these upgraded technical and teachers will hold Bachelor’s degrees in technical and teaching.
We don’t like President Mutharika because we abhor the proposed subsidies on iron sheets and cement for the so-called poor because this will increase the bill and the tax burden on the few that pay taxes. We will only support the iron sheet and cement subsidy when the hut-tax is brought back so that the poor also make a small annual contribution to the subsidies on fertiliser, medicine, cement and iron sheets.
The biggest winner, as we promised, is Joyce Banda. Her many televised visits into rural areas have reminded that we are an extremely poor country. That is why it is heartbreaking to see civil servants steal from the government at will. Joyce Banda is the biggest winner because since 1994 no other Malawian President has been praised for having opened up the MBC. Whether it was out of political naivety or genuine commitment to plural politics, Joyce Banda has solved a problem media gurus and activists have ached over for 20 years.
All previous electoral observers have decried MBC bias. Misa, Ifex, and other local media activists, have cried hoarse for the MBC to open up to the opposition and minorities. Neither Bakili Muluzi nor Bingu wa Mutharika listened. However, as MEC chairperson, Justice Mackson Mbendera, has acknowledged, Joyce Banda made a seminal presidential decision that the MBC should follow the provisions of the Malawi Communications Act (section 87) to serve all Malawians. Joyce Banda has taught us that MBC’s bias was influenced by politicians; not lack of professionalism. We want it to remain open.
If it slides back to the Makiyolobasi era, we will blame it on President Arthur Peter Mutharika and the Democratic Progressive Party. Joyce Banda has taught us that to remain perennially free, independent and professional the MBC needs political support and direction.
