Where does APM start from?

Honourable Folks, when APM extended an olive branch to his predecessor, Joyce Banda, at his inauguration, saying he wouldn’t engage in witch-hunting, I exclaimed: “hurray, @ 50 Malawi wakes up to serious politics.”

Now, as euphoria gradually sets in the west, I’m beginning to think maybe I started jiving before APM actually started playing his banjo. When he said he wouldn’t witch-hunt, he also said, in the same breath, he took an oath to defend the Constitution and laws of the land.

Therefore, in upholding the rule of law, nobody with a case to answer should expect any protection as a favour from him.

It’s a politically correct hard line which resonates well with the donor community who are saying no to 40 percent budgetary support until Cashgate is taken to its logical conclusion—the arrest of culprits, recovery of what remains of what was stolen and, perhaps more importantly, the sealing of loopholes in public finance management system.

As a taxpayer, I would also wish the APM administration scrutinised the K490 billion burden (comprising domestic debt and unpaid bills the JB administration allegedly amassed within the past year), my children and I are forced to bear, to see if every tambala of it was spent in the best way possible and within the law.

But the more I think about all this, the more I realise there’s no easy way for APM and his government to get at JB and her administration without appearing to be doing what he promised to avoid—witch-hunting.

While JB may have enjoyed the spoils of the past two years sharing any of it with the folks in DPP, the fact remains that, as I said a couple of weeks ago, her PP and DPP are a Janus-faced political construct of APM’s brother, the late Bingu wa Mutharika.

Bingu contested in 2009 with JB as runningmate and started his second term with JB as Vice-President. Both of them contested on DPP ticket. It’s in December 2010 that we heard about JB being fired from DPP on the grounds that she had created a “parallel structure”.

The parallel structure turned out to be PP which JB founded when it became apparent that she wasn’t wanted in DPP and government. Apparently, what stirred the hornet’s nest was her reluctance to endorse Peter as Bingu’s successor.

JB’s dismissal from DPP led to the Janus-faced political construct in which the DPP-led government had a President from DPP and a Vice-President, from the opposition PP , which was not just a rival but an outright enemy of DPP.

When Bingu died of cardiac arrest on April 5, 2012, his team had no choice but to unwillingly surrender all power to JB who in turn appointed Khumbo Kachali, another former DPP executive member who was fired together with JB in 2010, as Vice-President.

To rub it in, she fired the Bingu Cabinet and replaced it with her own team. Not only that, she also had key members of the DPP, including APM himself, arrested for treason. Yet all this drama happened in the act of finishing off the two years that remained of Bingu’s second term!

Interestingly, JB used her newly-acquired power to check the mess her predecessor left and used the knowledge to her advantage. Whatever, she was criticised for, she would hit back by citing the hackneyed refrain—it started during the Bingu administration.

Cashgate, political interference in the awarding of tenders by government, globe-trotting, senseless elevation of chiefs, even the tendency to arrest political rivals as a way of using the Presidency to throw Molotov cocktail at enemies—it was all there during the reign of Bingu.

So, where does APM start from? Can he make any arrests in connection with Cashgate without putting on the spot the excesses of his own brother and the former DPP led government where he himself and most of his Cabinet served?

It seems to me APM can’t correct the ills of the past—desirable though this is—unless he is prepared to cut off his own foot in the process. The easier way forward is to let the past be the past and ensure that governing justly starts now with his own administration.