My Diary

Why vote for another Mutharika?

About three weeks after the discovery that the late Bingu wa Mutharika was allegedly involved in financial debauchery that screwed Malawians of a cool K61 billion, the party that he found—DPP—has remained eerie mute apart from sporadic responses from people like Chaponda who justified the orgy on the fact that the former president worked in the UN system for 25 years where he might have acquired the colossal sum.

Perhaps the DPP is caught between a rock and hard place as they cannot openly repudiate a man whose DNA imprints are still all over their now tainted political organisation much as they know that the discovery of the obscene Mutharika loot is a political stinker that cannot go away.

This is the man whose name still forms part of the political slogans and folklore of DPP!

But DPP can choose to bury their head in the sand like an ostrich as long as they want yet one question they must face up and take responsibility in the run up to next year’s election is: Why should Malawians put in power a party founded by someone who only thought of his own belly by stashing billions abroad when they were suffering as a result of his poor economic policies and cowboy attitude towards donors and other aid agencies? Or to sharpen it further, what can make Malawians have that measure of faith to put Peter Mutharika in the State House, a brother to someone who clearly abused power? Why would they do that? Is it to get more screwed and fleeced?

The quick-fire response from the Peter Mutharika apologists is that he is his own man and not Bingu but I dare ask: Is that what he has said at any of his so called whistle-stop tours to those that have cared to listen to his speeches that sound like mere mumblings sometimes?

In other words, has DPP and Peter Mutharika been brave enough to address all the wrongs that they have visited upon Malawians? Put it simply, what is the stand of the party on the late Mutharika’s billions? Does it condone leaders abusing power and amassing wealth at the expense of ordinary Malawians?

DPP must then show repentance for all the other evils that their administration unleashed on hapless Malawians.

What do they say to the families and relatives of those defenceless young men that lay motionless in mortuaries in Mzuzu, Lilongwe and Blantyre after being mowed down by police bullets on July 20, 2011 and whose only crime was demanding good governance?

What message does DPP have to the parents of Robert Chasowa, a bright but harmless Polytechnic student who DPP saw otherwise and on whom it unleashed its thugs for merely writing stuff that circulated among his friends and no media editor in Malawi saw it newsworthy?

To cap it all, what does DPP say to all 13 million Malawians for messing the economy whose pain is still being felt today because of the late Mutharika’s over inflated ego of playing difficult with donors at a time when the country still needed them?

Unless Malawians hear solid answers to these questions through dialogue with them and not monologue at political rallies, they have absolutely no reason why they should vote for another Mutharika in power.

In other words, if there is a party that must be held to account for its actions before giving it more power, then that political organisation is the DPP.

And Peter Mutharika should not cheat himself that these things will just blow off and go away in the national memory.

That would not only be tragic but taking Malawians as drooling idiots. I repeat, why should Malawians give power to another Mutharika when the first one screwed them big time?

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