Time, vagrant is a hurry

Time is running out, it is all clear. You can see that in the way politicians are going about their business, aligning themselves to remain relevant.

The Tonse Alliance is currently under intense pressure to prove that it has fulfilled its campaign promises. A very tall order indeed.

We were told Malawians would be eating three times a day. Yet, that is a tall order, given that food is obscenely high that eating twice is a miracle for most of the rural folk are sleeping on an empty stomach.

We were fed another lie, about creation of a million jobs. Unemployment continues to be a thorn in the flesh of the Tonse administration.

Then there was that bit about fertilizer price going down to K14 500. This is a great lie of all time because at the moment, a bag is going around K70 000. It promises to bite even harder this year, since fertiliser is currently a scarce commodity, with industry players indicating that fertiliser is stuck in Mozambique due to forex hitches.

Even harder is the bearing that about one million have been chucked off the Affordable Inputs Programme list this year. Read: The programme will be more insignificant this year and will continue benefiting suppliers, transporters and other hangabouts, than the farmer at Namitambo.

We were told that this government would be about business unusual in the fight against corruption and fraud. This is quite unfathomable as we all know there are sacred cows, untouchables, in this administration whose scarlet sins are washed whiter than snow with the President at the Laundromat.

It is incomprehensible to find that even the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, that should pump an air of confidence on us, chooses to go the other way. Why, in all senses, would the committee drop the investigation on the East Bridge fertiliser bridge? No smoke without fire.

Then, there was that bait laid bear on cutting out on unnecessary travel. It is an open secret that President Lazarus Chakwera is on the road most of the time. He is scarcely in  the office.

Right now, we are being fed justification why the president has to be in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (Unga). At times, it is good to imagine. One can only imagine. Look, there was a leaked list of over 60 people that were supposed to go for the Unga.

A day or so later, the President announced he had trimmed his delegation by 80 percent. But then, what if the 35 were already earmarked for the trip and the 60 was only meant to hoodwink Malawians?

While it is clear that the President was scheduled to leave for New York on Friday, September 15 2023, it is open-ended as to when the President will fly back home. It is clear that he may chance on some other important meetings to attend to and a little more talk-shows to address while in America. Never mind, the problems Malawians are facing are being solved the Malawi Congress Party way, the non-challance way!

During the campaign in the run-up to the Fresh Presidential Elections, the Tonse Alliance mentioned, time and again, about mega farms. As time is running out, the Tonse spinners are going to town that this dream is coming real.

Only last week, Chakwera was in Nkhata Bay commissioning the Linga Dam which, according to him, will make the mega farms dream a reality. Commissioning the dam is one thing, and realizing the mega farm dream is yet another thing.

And in his speech during the commissioning, the President fumed about some contractors who deliberately delay finalising projects, while others do not hand over the works in time. If you don’t know the President, you would think he were serious about it, but then, had he been serious would he make the pronouncements on the pedestal at a political rally?

It is also apparent that the propaganda mill has it all that the harvest from the prison farms is a realization of the mega farm dream. We will talk about prisons going hungry later, but how the prison harvest fulfills the mega farms dream is, simply, baffling.

It is apparent that the President has realised time is running out fast. Which is why he used the road on his way to Lilongwe from the North. He just wanted to gauge if there would be a sea of faces. Yes, there may have been a sea of faces, but were they as hopeful faces as they were in the run-up to the polls that saw Chakwera rise to the helm?