Mdzukulu, we can talk all day about the country’s worryingly pervasive leadership mediocrity if not idiocy.
Clearly, there is no commitment from the leadership to adherence to democratic governance as enshrined in the Republican Constitution to speak of in the country although we, as a nation, reward such display of undemocratic behaviour with the noblest manifestation of democratic governance—a vote!
When a ruling party’s secretary general (SG) openly describes calls for her party to return the money it illegally sourced from public institutions ‘zachamba’ [nonsense] one has to wonder about what she is on.
This is, mdzukulu, exactly what Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) SG recently told civil society organisations (SCOs) accusing DPP of pocketing money from some of the country’s parastatals and Mzuzu and Blantyre city councils for its fundraising Blue Night event in Lilongwe.
The SG also reasoned that the party did not force anybody, including the concerned public institutions, to contribute to its cause.
Recall, mdzukulu, that former president Joyce Banda (JB) once displayed such blatant flawed reasoning.
The Daily Times of October 11 2013 carried a cartoon of a journalist and JB engaging in an interview on high-level corruption that had rocked the seat of government – Capital Hill.
In the interview, the journalist asked JB: “… Are you going to arrest the big fish?” In response, the former president said: “If someone steals and shares what he has stolen, the one who received a share is not a thief.”
The response from the former president honestly defies any known ethical and legal principle.
In essence, mdzukulu, DPP SG’s assertion on the public institutions’ contributions to the party’s fundraiser is as good as the counsel of JB.
It has been upheld both in law and ethics that anyone who freely and knowingly receives, keeps and even uses whatever is stolen is an equal partner to the crime.
This is the minimum standard practise in civilised legal and political jurisdiction.
That the whole ruling party SG would think in this way shows how systematic corruption has become in Malawi.
But perhaps that is much better naivety to come out of DPP.
After calling people all sorts of names for merely pointing out that the obvious death of ethical and sacrificial leadership is fuelling and encouraging corruption and unhelpful attitudes towards wastefulness in the use and abuse of the nation’s scarce and limited resources, DPP has asked for dialogue with the five CSOs that have dragged it to court over the money it got from the public institutions.
But DPP, mdzukulu, does not know that what worries the majority Malawians in not its schemed listening ear but that institutions that were expressly set up to regulate democracy, in terms of principles, values and practises are far too weak to serve the people in the frameworks of their official mandates.
Increasingly, the mandates of these agencies are usurped through systematic manipulation by the political elite, individual oligarchs and even political parties – exactly what DPP did with the public institutions that dipped in their depleted pockets to donate to the party.
So, after running down on people for merely stating that the DPP leadership is seen by those below it as practising politics of patronage, nepotism, abuse and misappropriation of official resources and wastefulness which is being copied by or influencing the behaviour of those below it, mdzukulu, the DPP SG should not ask for dialogue but rather humbly take the money to where it belongs.
That is the only reasonable, ethical and legal thing to do.
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