For six months now, President Peter Mutharika has not gone on any foreign trip, in the process staying away from 15 scheduled international meetings that he should have attended. Is this about austerity or isolationism? CHARLES MPAKA writes
The roads leading to the country’s two international airports have missed something in recent times –that old familiar swoosh and sirens of a Malawi presidential motorcade going at a breakneck speed. The silence has been almost ghostly.
That’s because since December 2015, President Peter Mutharika has not gone on any foreign trip, and according to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mutharika has stayed away from 15 international meetings most of which he was invited to attend.
On account of the track record of Malawi’s past post-1994 presidents and their appetite for foreign travel, it is strange that the president does not seem to be interested to spoil himself with flying business class around the world and spending nights in presidential suites in premier hotels –all in the claim of working for Malawi’s betterment.
But Mutharika, whether because that is how he was made or because of the force of circumstances of the moment, does drop threads that he isn’t for the picking of an already designed template on what others would call freedom of association.
From the atypical shortness of his speeches and official briefings to rare local public appearances, the president’s perspective on mass methods would seem to be that one has to set their own terms of functioning, that one has to function on the basis of procedures of their own creation and definition and suitability.
Perhaps, 25 months in power is not long enough for him to get to walk the route past presidents walked or to get drunk with trappings of presidency so he goes about defending ‘plunder’ of public resources under the disguise of serving the country through taking every foreign trip available. Indeed, politicians can go back on their word and that is their biggest constant.
‘I don’t like travelling’
But if Mutharika were to indeed abandon himself to the appetite of foreign travel, he would be betraying his personal philosophy which he laid before this nation last year.
It is October 2015. Mutharika has just returned from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, a trip peppered with uproarious condemnation. The criticism is largely because of the 106-member contingent that made up the Malawi delegation to the assembly and, particularly, the meaning of that size of a team on the complaining public purse.
The condemnation was so deafening that it rang through his years while he was still in New York. And so the outraged Mutharika came back charging down to “stop the nonsense of this unfair criticism”.
Everyone who travelled to the UNGA, including those in the private sector and civil society, was accredited as a Malawian delegate on account of US visa application procedures, he explained.
And that did not mean that every one of those was funded by the Malawi government, he said.
He added that even those that represented the Malawi government, not everyone was paid for by the government.
And then he said this:
“I personally don’t like travelling and when I travel it’s for the benefit of Malawians.”
Should this be what should stick, that whether Malawi has money for the President to spend on foreign trips or not, he was not made for travel politics?
DPP on foreign policy
In staying true to that character, the President is subjecting his party’s foreign policy position to some attention.
In its manifesto for the 2014 election which brought Mutharika to power, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) places Malawi’s participation in foreign engagements as one of its governance and development principles for the country.
The party promised it would foster international relations that strengthen Malawi’s drive towards a developmental state by embracing “development diplomacy”.
“The Democratic Progressive Party recognises that Malawi is not an island and its market is too small to attract large-scale investments in industrial and agriculture production, manufacturing and trade.
“Therefore, we will strongly support initiatives towards market integration in order to create a viable environment for growth and development,” reads the manifesto in part.
The party therefore promised to, among other actions, strengthen Malawi’s progressive involvement in regional and international economic integration and uphold the treaties to which Malawi appended its signature.
It isn’t exhaustive this as a foreign policy but it still does spell out the party’s place in foreign relations that Malawi is not an island, that even an island is defined in terms of the water that surrounds it.
Delegation
It is a fact though that Malawi has attended all those meetings through cabinet ministers and other government officials who the President delegates.
At these meetings, these officials carry the Malawi word. These officials have struck deals and drawn lessons that would improve this country. Through them, Malawi is still able to achieve its objectives in the pursuit of foreign relations as a development strategy. Through them, Malawi shows it belongs to the global community.
This is not to disregard the fact that a president is a president. His presence at such meetings makes a more serious statement for Malawi. It creates a bolder advert about what this nation stands for.
Benefit question
This brings us to the question of benefit. Mutharika said he would pick which meeting he should attend on consideration of how that trip would benefit the people of Malawi.
The meetings he has not attended include COP 31 in Paris, the 26th Session of the African Union Summit, Heads of State and Government meeting of the ACP/EU block and the World Economic Forum.
Mutharika has also stayed away from the United Nations General Assembly on ending HIV and Aids.
He cancelled his participation in inauguration ceremonies in Tanzania and Uganda and he did not attend the 27th Ordinary Summit of the African Union.
Mutharika also called off scheduled state visits to Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique. In April, he hosted President Phillipe Nyusi of Mozambique and President Edgar Lungu of Zambia in Lilongwe. However, the meeting had been initially scheduled for Livingstone in Zambia upon which Mutharika crossed it out of his diary until it ended up being held at Kamuzu Palace instead.
It is beyond debate that most of these meetings would bring considerable benefits to the people of Malawi if Mutharika attended them.
This brings into focus the issue of benefit.
On foreign travel by the President and government officials, Malawi finds itself in a difficult position because while it has to prove that it is not an island, it should also ensure that it does not please the world at the expense of its suffering economy.
That speaks for the need to weigh the benefits of travel on the one hand and the benefits of not travelling on the other.
On his trip to the UNGA last year, the media calculated –correctly or wrongly – that it must have cost the public purse not less than K330 million.
Not all trips have same requirements, which means that the money spent will vary from one trip to another. That said, for a president, however small a foreign trip might look, the sums of money required for him to undertake that trip are Head of State in size.
It suggests therefore that in staying away from 15 foreign trips in the past six months, Mutharika has done significant justice to the national kitty, apparently saving billions of kwacha in the process.
For an idea, what would K1 billion do?
In the just approved 2016/17 national budget, Parliament has allocated K300 million to set up staff for the Green Belt Authority. With Malawi reeling in weather-related food crisis, the authority is meant to craft and implement plans for Malawi to make the most of its water resources and lead the country to a Green Revolution equivalent to that which produced the Asian Tigers in global economy.
The K700 million balance can fund development projects in 39 constituencies, going by the 2016/17 national budget allocation of K18 million per constituency under the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
Ultimately, one question arises: How much would have the country gained if it had ‘invested’ K1 billion for the President to attend three of those overseas meetings while the Green Belt Authority and 39 constituencies went short of funding?
Thus, on the one hand, Malawi has to be part of the globe –for the sake of diplomatic correctness and the presumed benefits these meetings could bring. On the other hand, it has to ensure that the exercise of this global membership does not deprive it of resources already at hand –for immediate and touchable benefits.
It looks like the two sides are as clear from each other as day and night
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