To hell with Bingu’s fire brigade

Four ministers of President Bingu wa Mutharika's latest cabinet, Information minister, Patricia Kaliati, lands and housing minister, Yunus Mussa, local government minister, Henry Mussa and labour minister Lucius Kanyumba, called a press briefing in Lilongwe this week where they pleaded with civil society leaders to remain committed to the so called "dialogue".

According to Kaliati, the attacks on the Civil Society leaders are being perpetrated by some confused people who just want to frustrate the dialogue process. She and her fellow ministers were therefore requesting the activists to put the interest of the nation first before everything else.

They called for patience from civil society leaders to wait for police investigations, which are taking forever, into the petrol bomb attacks of the Institute for Policy Interaction offices in Blantyre and on a house belonging to outspoken activist, Reverend Mac Donald Sembereka.

Sembereka's house: Razed down

The CONGOMA chairperson, Voice Mhone has since announced CSO's pull out from the talks.

All this is not surprising and would normally not pass for news. Ordinarily, when two groups agree to meet and talk, none of the dialoguing groups:

*    sends its bully to be issuing intimidatory statements or as Emily Mkamanga aptly put it the other day, to be going about carelessly with his manner of speech and language, and

*     unleashes petrol bombers, none of whom has so far been apprehended by the police.

The bombers, it ought to be said are not a new phenomenon with the DPP. They raised their ugly snouts close to the July 20 Mass Demonstration by attacking Zodiak Radio Station.

When these two things happen, and the Police which is quick to apprehend Associate Professor Chinsinga on a flimsy pretext does nothing and has nothing to show after "investigations"; only an idiot would pretend that all is well and the so called "dialogue" is genuine.

What is surprising about the ministerial pleas to CSO however is that President Bingu wa Mutharika was not too long ago haranguing these very same ministers that:

"You are not obliged to report to NGOs nor accountable to NGOs, [Undule] Mwakasungula or anyone else. The donor community should know that no government is accountable to the NGOs."

Now if the ministers are not accountable to NGOs or Undule, why are they wasting their time, and everybody's, pleading with the NGOs to return to the table of dialogue even as petrol bombs are raining, demolishing their offices and homes?

If, as President Bingu wa Mutharika, when speaking during the swearing in ceremony of the new thirty member cabinet at the new state house in Lilongwe on Thursday last week, said it is wrong for civil society to make demands during dialogue with government, but they should just present their concerns; why should he want NGOs back on the dialogue table? Is the man OK upstairs?

The problem is that even the CSOs are at fault. They are at fault because in their 20-point July 20 Petition, they perhaps left out the most poignant demand. What the CSOs needed to make clear and unambiguous is that they will not dialogue, or conduct vigils and demonstrations till kingdom come – there should be a timeframe for action. They should have been firmer with a deadline for action.

They needed to let Bingu know that If he does not change his manner of speech, his behaviour, his poor leadership style, his economic mismanagement and if he continues dillydallying in acting on the twenty demands, he will be changed.

To wrap up: what Bingu's ministers need to know is that Civil Society, as rightly observed by the now hated leader of the Catholic Church in Malawi, does not exist to please only one man, no matter his how bloated his ego is. The Civil Society, unlike the cabinet, is not a praise team.

And as free advice to the new cabinet, the best that the new ministers can do, if they want to last, is to stop behaving like a fire brigade every time Bingu misfires. They should instead start working honestly and earnestly on any of the twenty demands that pertain to their allocated ministries.

Or else, when he goes, they too will go; and then we will see who is accountable to whom.

We, the people, have spoken.

Nyasa Times 16 Sep, 2011

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Source: http://www.nyasatimes.com/columns/to-hell-with-bingu%e2%80%99s-fire-brigade/
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