Who is Ireen Chikuni?

When the last chapter of this country’s history is written, there will be certain men and women whose contribution for the good of us all through their valour, courage and sacrifice will not be forgotten.

The point is there are certain people in Malawi, alive or dead, who matter to Malawians for what they have done for this country and that when they speak and cough, we listen and take them seriously. When they veer off from the correct path, as human beings, we correct them respectfully.

But let me hasten to add here that this does not apply to every Jim and Jack who calls himself or herself a politician.

It has to be people who matter to us and those who do not better watch their mouth and if they have nothing to say, they better keep it zipped instead of saying things that annoy Malawians.

Ireen Chikuni has no any consequence on Malawians yet she has the audacity of standing on a political podium in Ndirande and threaten the media in Malawi with violence and government advertising ban for writing about President Joyce Banda.

My response is very simple. She has every right in this country to hop from one party to the other in full exercise of her freedom of association but she has to limit herself to that—a hangers-on—and not take forays and enter into fights she has no clue about on how to win them.

Media freedom, to hold those who were given power by Malawians to account for it is guaranteed in the Constitution and by the mere fact that Chikuni is now a deputy secretary general of PP—a party that got into power by fate of death—does not give her any right to change it at a campaign rally in order to please her latest master (is it mistress?).

As for the advertising to media houses, unlike in cashgate where unscrupulous businessmen and women siphoned billions of kwacha of taxpayers’ money for supplying nothing, this one is a purely legitimate business transaction.

Media houses offer a service to government that has value for taxpayers’ money. This money is not from the personal pocket of Chikuni or any PP official for that matter.

I repeat, it is taxpayers’ money which government uses to get a service through which it communicates issues to its citizens.

It must be said that DPP took the same sadistic route and formed task forces merely to see the demise of independent media houses such as NPL which I work for. It was condemned and it failed spectacularly.

Moses Kunkuyu, when he was Minister of Infor-mation, said publicly that such a thing would not happen under the PP administration.

I would have thought PP characters such as Ireen Chikuni had learnt a lesson from that as it should be basic knowledge that anybody who has some semblance of proximity to government should work for job creation for citizens and not working to kill them.

Does Chikuni realise how many jobs she is risking by making unguided and misguided statements about media houses? Who gave her that right? And who does she think she is?

Yet, I must admit, being a political non-entity and a woodpecker for that matter, I know very little of Chikuni apart from the fact that former president Bakili Muluzi sacked her unceremoniously as his adviser on women affairs.

I also know that this action from Muluzi followed publication of some salacious material about her in a local magazine although I cannot vouch for its veracity.

But If I were her, I would appreciate who I am and stop uttering statements whose effect is to sink the very person I am trying to please, the President.

It is people like Chikuni that render credence to the statement that PP is just Team B of the cruel DPP whose atrocities that it visited on Malawians, including slaughtering 20 of them in 2011, cannot be forgotten in the mind of many a voter.

Thank God, PP has disowned Chikuni’s nonsensical statement in Ndirande. I expected the party to do more by firing her from her position as Muluzi did some years ago.

I repeat this statement. Chikuni is a non entity who has no consequence on Malawians and does not form any part of our history. She better give us a break and keep her mouth shut especially on issues she has no clue about such as media freedom and how it came about in this country.

Who is Ireen Chikuni?