The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government is at it again-telling Malawians off for attempting to claim and protect their right to good governance.<\/p>\n
It was incredible to see Cabinet Ministers, led by Trade, Industry and Tourism Minister, Joseph Mwanamvekha, addressing the press on preparations for the country\u2019s 53rd Independence celebrations. The Ministers prepared for the briefing, called the media, talked a lot but said nothing.<\/p>\n
It is shocking to observe that President Peter Mutharika continues with the repulsive habit of treating Malawians with contempt on matters of national importance.<\/p>\n
Media practitioners could not believe their ears and eyes to hear and see the ministers taking turns in mocking Malawians the way they did.<\/p>\n
Mwanamvekha said he could not divulge the budget figures because if the final figure changes, Malawians would be on them. This is a clear testimony that the Mutharika administration hates the cardinal principle of democracy which is transparency and accountability.<\/p>\n
The revelation means that Mutharika and his government want to rake in the most out of the celebrations. If the government does not have a budget ceiling, how will it ensure that it lives within austerity measures that are being forced on the citizens?<\/p>\n
But Malawians are not surprised with the position that the Mutharika administration has chosen. The President and his government hate to be held accountable.<\/p>\n
Memories are still fresh of the President\u2019s declaration that he hates to be given deadlines by citizens of this country. We also recall that recently, Mutharika flew out with over 100 delegates to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. His ministers promised to account for the expenses of the trip on Mutharika\u2019s return.<\/p>\n
But when Mutharika returned, he refused to account for the poor tax-payers money that he blew on pleasing partisan chiefs and party cadres who thought the trip was their reward for their blind loyalty.<\/p>\n
It must be a cause for concern to most Malawians to hear Mwanamvekha saying \u201csome well-wishers who do not want to be mentioned\u201d are partly funding the celebrations. This smells of trouble because, by hiding their identity, the well-wishers want to exploit government tenders and appointments. Malawians do not want to wake up one morning and realise that Malawi is under state-capture by some corrupt business magnets just because the DPP leaders are mortgaging this country for personal benefit.<\/p>\n
Malawians deserve to know how their hard-earned money is being spent by those merely entrusted to run the affairs until 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government is at it again-telling Malawians off for attempting to claim and protect their right to good governance. It was incredible to see Cabinet Ministers, led by Trade, Industry and Tourism Minister, Joseph Mwanamvekha, addressing the press on preparations for the country\u2019s 53rd Independence celebrations. The Ministers prepared for the […]<\/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-49643","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\/49643","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=49643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49645,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49643\/revisions\/49645"}],"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=49643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}