Malawians who love this country should really get worried with how President Mutharika and his DPP are running it.
It is like a surreal dream from where you hope to wake up from and realize it is not real.
But what is happening is real and it flies straight into the face of the ideals that noble citizens wanted and voted for during the 1993 referendum.
In case the President and his DPP do not know, it is this. Malawians then dreamed of country where they would be free to comment on national matters and principles of accountability and transparency would be the supreme guide among their leaders.
Sadly and on account of what is obtaining right now in this nation, this has been greatly compromised.
Can Mutharika, while in the comfort of the State House, eat and sleep in peace and justify the actions of his police to arrest a 19-year old kid and throw into a stinking cell for 36 hours merely because he was exercising his right to freedom of expression by saying that the President was failing to run the affairs of government and that he did not tell Malawians the truth regarding the maize situation?
All this was because of some overzealous DPP woman clad in party cloth who reported him to Police who were manning the route of the presidential motorcade to a presidential function.
National Police spokesman Nicholas Gondwa shamelessly told the nation that the kid was charged with breach of peace. Which peace did the student breach and where to deserve this crass treatment at the hands of police in his own country?
And then there is the other youth in Mzuzu who broke ranks with their counterparts and wanted to exercise their right to demonstrate lack of maize. They refused to be bribed with money and alcohol and still wanted to protest.
They too were arrested and thrown into stinking cells and once again charged with breach of peace.
The question that the President must deal with is what does he want of Malawians? That we should all be quiet like drooling idiots when things are wrong? That we must not demand accountability?
It seems to me, there is a dubious DPP modus operandi under implementation right now.
It is either they arrest anybody who is speaking or issue press releases explaining away clear breaches of rule of law that go against essential tenets of an accountable government.
Then the President himself puts everything into perspective by being rabid and going into a rant against the very same things that his own DPP promised Malawians as he did on Saturday in Lilongwe.
The DPP manifesto of 2014 is leather-bound and very clear in its intentions. It was not written by anybody but the party itself. In selling the President, the party wrote that if voted into power it would reduce presidential powers.
The relevant paragraph goes like this: “The DPP government will reduce concentration of power in the presidency. Appointment and removal of the Governor of the RBM, Director of the ACB, the Audit General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Clerk of Parliament, Malawi Human Rights Commission Executive Secretary, the Malawi Law Commissioner, the Director General of the MBC, MACRA Director General, and the leaders of other accountability institutions shall be appointed on MERIT through a Special Public Appointments Committee.”
Why then should the President turn around today and rant at Malawians to the effect that there are some characters roaming around wanting to get his powers through the back door? Who is he fooling?
If power has become so sweet and that the President has changed his mind not to share it as he promised in his own party manifesto, the manly (even womanly) thing to do it to say I have changed my mind.
Ranting at Malawians and calling them names is not right. Arresting kids who merely want to express themselves is wrong and completely undemocratic by a president who has spent 40 years in the cradle of democracy, the US.
Malawians with good intentions must get worried with the direction that this country is taking and the threat is real.
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