Any government interested in being re –elected is always conscious of the circumstances that led to its election in the first place.
President Peter Mutharika’s government campaigned in 2012 on what amounted to a slogan of getting Malawi working again – infrastructure; building hospitals and changing the living conditions of many, especially the vulnerable communities.
After a few years though, economic contraction, and an attendant surge in unemployment, social tension and crime are rife again.
Unemployment and underemployment remain chronic problems, particularly joblessness among pockets of young people in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu who have grown increasingly disenchanted and disengaged from mainstream society.
And now, less than 15 months before the next election, the DPP and its supporters must be eyeing the clash between heightened expectations and lackluster reality with some apprehension.
As we head into the next election, present levels of public spending are evident but unsustainable. Adding to an already impossibly large domestic debt burden with increased spending, borrowing would be both financially irresponsible and morally reprehensible.
But, demonstrating the kind of powerfully self-defeating logic, which is certainly not unknown among politicians, Mutharika and company cannot stop the spending. They had to raise K4 billion at all costs to say Thank you to 86 MPs who helped them stifle the six electoral reforms bills last year.
Today, we reveal how that money was raised using the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. The Ministry wantonly reduced allocations for all district hospitals, slashed the budget for construction of boreholes meant to answer the water problems rural communities face across Malawi every day.
They never cared about cutting off the life line for many rural communities and slashed about K400 million in total, effectively compromising delivery of health services in all district hospitals.
The Development of Boreholes lost over K750 million in the deductions while the budget for the rehabilitation of roads in Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu saw K3 billion removed from the total allocation of K10 billion.
They further went ahead and reduced by K3 billion the budget for the rehabilitation of roads in cities when the public knows that our bad roads are killing too many lives.
All politicians, of course, factor the public mood and electoral considerations into their policy thinking. It would be entirely unnatural if they didn’t. In this instance though, DPP elevated political expediency over economic reality which must condemned and shunned.
The government still has much work to do to ensure that Malawians not only share in the rewards of economic recovery but are aware those rewards will indeed be accruing to them in the not too distant future.
And, just as importantly, it is incumbent on Mutharika to make sure than the K4 billion is withdrawn and spent as planned and not spend it to please the MPs who already have already demonstrated that they cannot manage the CDF and LDF funds.
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