The arrests of Malawi Congress Party Members of Parliament and executive member this week have done no good to the already battered image of the Democratic Progressive Party government.
Many people, I am sure, must be shuddering at the thought that we are steadily being taken back to the old times of DPP’s intimidation and elimination tactics.
You can easily laugh and at the same time be utterly shocked by the degree of paranoia government has just shown this week. But some of us are not an inch surprised because the DPP is known for going brutal on critics once running the government has become too much for the blue party.
Between 2010 and 2012 when former president Bingu wa Mutharika lost the plot and had driven the country to nearly-collapse, he turned cynic and started accusing everyone of working so hard oust his government.
If he was not accusing donors, then he was on the opposition, then civil society organisations and even the media. What resulted was a period of terror that we all wish to obliterate from the national psyche. Sadly, this DPP, it seems, wants to take us that way. But we will not allow time this time.
Malawians are disillusioned and you can easily read it from their faces and words. Most of them feel betrayed by how the DPP government has—in only twenty-one months—turned the country’s economy outside down and how almost every public service has been left hopelessly squatting.
To deal with such discontented people, the last thing a clever and normal government should do is to employ tactics that make people angry.
There is something common about failed government all over the world. To veil their glaring ineptitude and obvious failure, bad governments will start looking and digging for ways of gagging critics even from the most unlikely of places like Whatsapp and trump up some phantom treason charges whose grounds are even laughable by the most rustic legal process.
Ironically, Peter Mutharika has never hidden his disdain of what he calls silly treason charges.
May be because politicians are best known for their goldfish memories, Peter and his cabal might have forgot ten that after assuming office, they made noise by holding a carnival all the way to Maula Prison to commemorate Peter’s arrest for treason during the government of Joyce Banda.
Peter even made a joke of himself when he scribbled graffiti on a wall of a prison cell. Perhaps the most resonant of that ludicrous show was Peter’s promise that his government would never arrest people on “silly” treason charges.
But look now, barely two years after the assurance, people have already started been kicked into police cells for clearly made up charges that have even left the police confused and with eggs all over their face when they attempt to explain.
What is clear here is that Peter Mutharika has a team of useless advisors who act before they think. And on many occasion this cast of hopeless advisors has left the president and his government cringing in shame.
This is the time, more than ever, Peter needed clever and sane people who could help him veer this country out of the economic mess we have gotten ourselves into.
Things are not rosy for Mutharika’s government and there is so much to be done other than wasting time with this trivia that we are too obsessed with.
Arresting people will not bring maize to Admarc, gagging people will not put drugs on hospital shelves. Even eliminating people will not suddenly get our sick kwacha up there with the best of this world.
It is depressing that our government has really let itself stoop so low and demonstrate lack of national seriousness by getting muddled in such embarrassing acts of suffocating illusory dissidents.
We should hang our heads in shame because government ought to do better than this, really.
I know politicians are a greedy bunch and would do anything to get into government because, by our rotten culture, being in government is the surest way to amassing obscene wealth. But it will take an extremely naive, silly and desperate cast to try to topple a government through whatsapp?
Out here, many people believe that one case that was close to treason was when the Mid Night Six attempted to stand in the way of a legitimate vice president to assume office those three mad days of April 2012.
Otherwise most of the treason brouhaha we have been made to know here at home spring from some paranoia of failed and insecure governments. And they all end up in nothing.
As I said earlier, I hope we are not being dragged to those bloody days when the likes of Robert Chasowa and those July 20 protesters were murdered in the most stomach-churning act of raw brutality and savagely.
We have s een enough of government’s intimidation of people and like a burnt childthat dreads fire we are not ready to witness this resurrection of wolves.
ADDENDUM
Honorary degrees and noise
IT is quite funny how people make a fuss about honorary degrees. This week the social media has been awash with comments about University of Malawi’s (Unima) awarding first lady Gertrude Mutharika an honorary doctorate degree of Philosophy in Environment Management. It appears some people are not happy with it.
But if you were to ask me, an honorary degree is nothing other than honorary. It won’t change anything to most of us. We know of so many people who have been awarded honorary papers and strangely they love the air of being addressed by their honorary titles unabashedly. But it matters less to you and me.
The first lady, as we are made to believe, has been honoured for her work at Beautify Malawi(Beam) which is generally centred on environmental work. That, as I said is what we have been made to believe.
What people should, however, be worried about and spend time to inquire is whether the first lady has really done enough to deserve such an honour. I mean isn’t there someone or a group of people at Unima who are only trying to be politically right?
It will be a shame on Unima to start conferring honorary degrees to people whose achievements is not even there to be seen but only because they are close to the country highest office.
Honorary or not, a reputable university must never stoop too low and start taking short cuts to appease people.
I am not sure whether the good first lady satisfied all the requirements to become doctor but it will be a great shame, as many others think, that Unima should be honouring someone simply because she is the president’s spouse.
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