Dear judge Mbadwa,
Those who were born several decades ago, when courting was not made simple by technology, knew the importance of crafting words into some form of manifesto in a letter to coax a lady.
The letter was a prized document in that enterprise and those who didn’t know how to read and write were thus disadvantaged.
My lord, fact-checking the manifesto of the prospective husband required an elaborate method that called for some kind of peer collaboration.
“Do you really know this man? Is he what he claims to be?” Peers would be asked and information would even be gleaned from relatives.
It wasn’t just easy, my lord, to deduce whether the prospective husband is selling you a dummy.
But in the fast-paced world of social media, it was strange that Lazaro decided to employ this out-dated mode of cajoling a potential voter, attempting to convince him or her that in his five years, he has delivered.
By using this archaic approach of cajoling a potential voter with sweet nothings in what others are now calling State of the Districts Address (Soda)—when someone would easily debunk the exaggerated achievement claims by just scrolling down their smart phone in a jiffy—the Cockerel Party was inviting itself to public ridicule.
If you asked me, my lord, that tactic of claiming projects that are hardly complete has boomeranged on the architects of the Soda because it ended up creating an impression that there isn’t much that has been done anyway.
All the good work that has actually been done has been drowned in the cacophony of rebuttals that the Soda have generated.
My lord, imagine a scenario where some local council officials of some remote districts are poking holes in the Soda that was delivered with gusto in the Nyasaland Legislative Assembly.
Now the aftermath of that careless approach has left Cockerel strategists with some eggs on their face they are struggling to wash away.
The damage control strategy of engaging Cabinet ministers to visit project areas to provide clarity doesn’t seem an ingenious move because it creates an impression that the half-truths are expansive.
My lord, what happened to that mantra let ‘the works of my hands testify for me’, something that the late Moya popularised?
My lord, the citizens are not that naïve. If Lazaro has done well, he will get his credit and in areas where he has failed they will not shy away from also pointing that out.
I thought the ministers should have trained all their efforts on ensuring that prices of commodities are not escalating every second as they are doing now instead of engaging in a futile exercise of sanitising the Soda.
Regards,
John Citizen.
