To whom then is JB accountable?

October 14, 2013

Was President Joyce Banda really justified to put all of us on tenterhooks by pretending to dissolve her Cabinet in view of the massive fraud at Capital Hill when all she wanted was to fire a couple of ministers and retain the rest in the same old Cabinet story she announced on Tuesday?

While Ken Lipenga had to go as Finance Minister for presiding over two scandals in the name of MRA borrowing from commercial banks to dupe Malawians that Bingu wa Mutharika’s disastrous zero-deficit budget was working as well as the massive looting orgy at Capital Hill, Malawians will be left to only speculate as to why other ministers such as Ralph Kasambara faced the boot as the President has not offered any explanation in the name of accountability.

This leads to some senseless and misleading statement that came from the State House Press Office this week to the effect that when it comes to appointments into Cabinet, the President is accountable to no one.

I do not know whether this is a result of naked ignorance or just a feeble attempt at being clever or just plain mischief, but declaring in the media that the President is accountable to no one in reaction to some Malawians making their opinion on what kind of Cabinet they wanted to see is outlandish and does not have any democratic basis.

The Constitution in Chapter III, Section 12(iii) clearly stipulates: “The authority to exercise power of State is conditional upon the sustained trust of the people of Malawi and that trust can only be maintained through open, accountable and transparent Government and informed democratic choice.”

Why somebody in their right senses would say the President is accountable to no one in view of the above beats the hell out of me and I yell blue murder!

Malawians should be worried with the calibre of people that have surrounded the President. Question is, if they can say such things with empty arrogance in the public, what do they say to the President in private?

Malawians should not be surprised that the President sometimes says things that are patently unpresidential and difficult to comprehend. We now know where they come from. You remember how she threw out of the window the  principle of complicity to a crime the other day when she incoherently said something to the effect that when a thief shares his or her loot with you, you are not to blame?

We now know the source and it is the State House Press Office which encourages her to be arrogant and utterly undemocratic. In advanced democracies, such people would immediately resign for showing clear lack of understanding of the environment that they are supposed to operate in. Here we normally look the other side when somebody is muzzling things up.

My free advice to the personnel in State House is as follows: If they have nothing to say to the media, they should just stay put and enjoy the comfort that their positions bring, other than embarrassing themselves by making public statements that show their pathetic grasp of the constitutional order on which this nation is found, thereby misleading the illiterate masses.

Under the present arrangement, the President will always be accountable to the people of Malawi in any exercise of power that her constitutional position bestowed on her and this includes appointing ministers.

This is cast in stone and does depend on the infertile imagination of anybody at the State House Press Office.