Tonse faulted on DPP blame game

The Tonse Alliance administration has been blamed for attributing Malawi’s misfortunes to the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regime, three years after assuming power.

Governance experts expressed the sentiments in separate interviews on Friday following Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC) Colleen Zamba’s claims that debts inherited from the DPP regime are slowing the Marka-Bangula rail project.

Zamba, who inspected the rail project on Thursday, attributed the project delays—whose progress is at 20 percent though its deadline was November this year—to government’s repayments of debts incurred during the DPP regime.

Zamba claimed that the debts were mainly for consumption.

She said: “You will recall that this administration inherited a lot of debts from the previous [DPP] administration which appeared to be for consumption.

“So, some months, there is so much pressure because there is a huge bill that has to be paid. There is just so much pressure in some months, so that is what is happening.”

DPP spokesperson Shadric Namalomba had not responded to our questionnaire by press, but governance expert Mavuto Bamusi in an interview on Friday said the Tonse Alliance administration must stop giving lame excuses for its own inefficiencies.

Bamusi, a former presidential adviser on civil society, said the current administration should focus on finding solutions to the challenges.

Bamusi said: “Tonse made campaign promises in their manifesto and they were fully aware about the challenges Malawi had. It is senseless to blame the DPP yet the President has been opening development projects which were initiated by the same party [DPP].”

Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency executive director Willy Kambwandira in a separate interview also argued that the government needs to be accountable to its own inefficiencies. He said: “It is very important that development projects are implemented in the most transparent and accountable