It is disheartening to learn that almost two months after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) found over K166 million at former Agriculture Minister George Chaponda\u2019s house in Lilongwe, the bureau is yet to question him on the same.<\/p>\n
Malawians would like to know why it has taken the ACB very long to put their act together and question the embattled former minister.<\/p>\n
As a country that believes in the rule of law, this is not only unfair, but a distortion of justice, a clear sign that selective application is at play in the country and that prosecution depends on one\u2019s alignment to the ruling party.<\/p>\n
It is not long ago when former Minister of Home Affairs Uladi Mussa was arrested for issuing passports to foreign nationals and, interestingly, the ACB acted swiftly by summoning Mussa for questioning. One would expect that the same haste would be applied on the issue of Chaponda.<\/p>\n
But ACB\u2019s swift action on Mussa proves that the bureau is a bulldog targeting the opposition; a bulldog that has no muscle to jump over the other side of the fence when it smells a rat on that side.<\/p>\n
The decision by ACB to delay the questioning of Chaponda does not only put the credibility of the bureau into disrepute, but also proves that the hierarchy at the bureau sings praise songs for the DPP masters and dilly dallies when it comes to biting the hand that feeds it.<\/p>\n
The argument by the ACB that the questioning has delayed because the money that was found in the course of another investigation does not even hold because, as far as the Exchange Control Act is concerned, what the minister did to keep such sums of foreign currency without authorisation from Minister of Finance? is an offence on its own and is enough to warrant a summon.<\/p>\n
What the ACB Director General and others at ACB should know is that the gaze of the 17 million Malawians is fixed on the bureau, waiting to see how the issue will unfold and the explanation the former minister will give on how he got the money and what purpose it was serving in his house.<\/p>\n
ACB therefore needs to act with caution. Time has already been wasted and Malawians cannot afford to wait any longer. What Malawians are doing is not bullying, as the ACB Director has intimated; it is rather a quest towards making sure that justice is done in the Chaponda case, and that the same justice applies to everyone.<\/p>\n
Let justice reign!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is disheartening to learn that almost two months after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) found over K166 million at former Agriculture Minister George Chaponda\u2019s house in Lilongwe, the bureau is yet to question him on the same. Malawians would like to know why it has taken the ACB very long to put their act together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44482,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44478\/revisions\/44482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}