Tonse secrecy under scrutiny

President Lazarus Chakwera and his Tonse Alliance administration have come under fire for not disclosing crucial reports and government deals that affect taxpayers.

Civil society organisations, the opposition and governance commentators in separate interviews said this contradicts Tonse Alliance campaign promises of a transparent government driven by servant leadership.

The reactions come against the background of numerous reports that the administration has withheld its contents from the public, including on the recent K128 billion fertiliser deal and the flopped K750 million subsidy fertiliser contract.

The botched fertiliser deal was exposed by the media and opposition legislators while the K128 billion fertiliser deal, various versions keep emerging, arousing suspicion from the public.

On reports, the President has withheld details of Vice-President Saulos Chilima-led public service review, the 2021 civil servants salary delays report and the 2020 Cabinet assessment review.

The government has also played hide and seek on the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) expenditure.

But despite the President indicating that the public service reforms report was never meant to be for ‘public entertainment’, former government spokesperson Gospel Kazako told The Nation of July 7 2021 that it would be made public as the government was following the rule of law on delays to release contents to the public.

Prior to the June 23 2020 court-sanctioned Fresh Presidential Election and during his inauguration, the President also promised to run a transparent government as compared to the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regime.

Leader of Opposition in Parliament Kondwani Nankhumwa in an interview said this shows that the Tonse Alliance administration is failing on transparency and accountability.

He said: “Even a nursery school child knows President Chakwera and his Tonse government have failed the citizenry in many areas, including that of transparency and accountability. The list is long. The list is endless.

“Malawians should not expect much from the Chakwera administration. Remember, they have only about two years to go before we go to the polls. They haven’t delivered and they can’t do so now.”

Nankhumwa, who is also DPP vice-president (South), described the Tonse Alliance administration as clueless.

Governance commentator Mavuto Bamusi in a separate interview said it is disappointing that the President and his administration are failing to walk the talk on transparency and accountability.

“There is overflowing hypocrisy supported by empty rhetoric. Tonse is good at signing accountability charters and is bad at implementing them,” he said.

Bamusi said the secrecy that has shrouded the government is a breach of public trust and that  as it makes citizens look abused with fake promises just to get votes.it undermines the social contract

He suggested that one way to address the problem of secrecy is by instituting citizen sanctions on public officers not demonstrating accountability.

Bamusi said: “Citizens should be empowered to sanction officers that deliver unfulfilled promises. This is because citizens are the reasons the Constitution exists.”

Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency executive director Willy Kambwandira in an interview said the President and the entire government should be reminded that they cannot backpedal on promises.

“He [Chakwera] has the obligation to report to Malawians. Sadly, there is no framework to force politicians to account for their promises, and Parliament, too, has failed to play its oversight,” he said.

However, Kambwandira said citizens must remain vigilant and demand accountability from political leaders.

But Minister of Information and Digitalisation Moses Kunkuyu, who is also the official government spokesperson, argued that the government or the President cannot leave a tap of information open.

“We cannot sweepingly say the government is not being transparent just because certain information has been classified.

“World over, there is no government that leaves an open tap of information. Information is there to help the leadership decide how to govern people and that does not always have to be made public,” he said.

Kunkuyu argued that the best practices the world over are that when reports and recommendations come, the government scrutinises them and sees how best to use or disregard them all for the good of its people.

He further argued that if reports are carelessly made public, they breed chaos.

“For example, this particular report was looking at the civil service which is the biggest employer for the country and if, for instance, the report talked about the need to retrench half of the employees, people would either panic or become impatient which would breed chaos,” further argued Kunkuyu.

But Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence argued that the government remains accountable to the citizenry.

He said: “If the Tonse government is to be trusted, let them make the fertiliser contracts, including the public sector review report public. Otherwise, we believe Malawians were sold a dummy and they should not expect more from this government.”•