Northerners urged to quit DPP, Bingu govt over quota system –FOND

The Forum for New Direction (The FOND) is demanding immediate resignation of Members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers in the DPP led government – following the President’s open declaration that he supports the Quota System for selecting students into all tertiary academic institutions.

President Bingu wa Mutharika told a news conference on Wednesday that the current merit selection system is not proper the northern region dominates in academic and civil affairs in this country.

“Initially the residents of northern region and those of the entire country, entrusted their dreams and visions by massively voting the incumbency Bingu wa Mutharika into power; FOND is concerned that the President has turned out to be pursuing tribal and rationalistic agendas and is fast acquiring dictatorial tendencies reminiscent of the MCP government of Kamuzu Banda,” said a statement issued by spokesman Msenga Mulungu.

The statement e-mailed to Nyasa Times said FOND with members from all walks of life including representatives from churches and other collaborating groupings in the north, is demanding that its sons and daughters in cabinet and parliament pull out of government and resign from DPP with immediate effect.

“Where they insist on continuing to serve in this government, they will be deemed as sell outs and traitors to unity and co-existence of diversity; but also collaborators of discriminatory government policies,” said the statement.

“FOND on behalf of the residents of northern region is against Quota System and therefore expects the region’s representatives in this government and parliament to openly say NO in accordance to the wishes of their voters,” it said.

The group said northerners who will continue to serve Mutharika in government will do so at the peril of their political careers.

President Mutharika said under quota system, government guarantees each district specific number of places in the university and the remaining places will be filled on merit.

“The new system is not discriminating against the people from Northern Malawi but rather it’s aimed at giving every Malawian equal opportunity to university education,” Mutharika told journalists.

However, FOND said it is of the position that grounds for introducing Quota System are lame.

“We are all Malawians. Any persistence for lawmakers from the north to continue to stay in government will be an open defiance to the aspirations of their voters.

“Quota System assumes that graduates from tertiary institutions go to work in their districts and thereby make their districts/regions more developed than others. This is ironical because if this were the case the northern region would be the most developed; and yet the reality on the ground show that most of the graduates from tertiary institutions (from all the regions) have been concentrated in the south and central regions and have worked hard together to develop our Malawi.”

The group said it is now wary whether or not the many unfilled vacancies in the government right now are not connected to the issue of equitable distribution of resources too – emanating from the perceived fear that they will be occupied by the people from the northern region, considering the President’s “perceived annoyance” that the so called ‘super scale’ jobs in government are filled by people from the north.

“With this open attitude of hatred for a section of people, is it not possible then that the government has deliberately not filled them for fearing the likely occupants will be ‘residents of the north?’ Hence increasing the skewing of the so called super scale whatever it means? ‘If we cannot have these jobs, then they cannot have the jobs either” – so service delivery suffers. This is how FOND is now trying to understand the current government and the incumbent,” said the statement.

“If government is so eager to introduce the Quota System, why does it not also introduce quota or equitable access to all other areas civil and political, to address the endemic imbalances?”

FOND said the statistics that Mutharika provided to journalists about northern residents occupying many positions in the super scale of government are baseless.

“The reality on the ground shows that the influential positions in civil service and politics – the movers and shakers –are held by people from the President’s region or tribe [Lhomwe]. If government is well intentioned about the Quota System, will it consider a ministerial positions per each district; a principal secretary per each district etc. etc. if equitable access to national resources is such an important issue. What more can a leader be divisive than this?”

The group said quota system is tantamount to outright discrimination and punishment of hard work.

“One can see that the President’s arguments to introduce the quota system at any cost clearly shows deep rooted animosity that either he or his office has towards residents of the northern region even when he knows that political and economic monopoly and infrastructural development has also been skewed among the regions – with the central and southern regions getting lion’s shares.

“Yet not a single day did the current and previous governments and leaderships called for the north too to have a quota share. Are we going to consider quota on everything? Including the presidency and the budget? Are we saying then that government must introduce a quota based system on the budget, if the president’s analogy of a family is to be considered – where government as a mother ensures that all children get an equal share of food?

“Doesn’t this mean that the north must get a lion’s share of the budget? For you cannot let a vulnerable thin and hungry child (north) starve just because mother (the government) is giving all the food to children that are already full and just want to dominate. Is not this the president’s argument?”

FOND said it is of the view that from his remarks, the President would rather the northern residents and the region were dismembered from his memory and that of the nation: “it’s like they irk him; they are an eye sore to nationhood; it’s like he regrets they are part of Malawi and wishes they were species that existed elsewhere and not in Malawi.

“For how else does one describe a leader who thus says, ‘You can’t let other children starve just because one is crying for dominance; why should some people fight for dominance?’ FOND finds the description of the people of the north by the president as dominant an unfortunate statement; for if the leader is at the forefront to spit such venom in public against the so called ‘dominating’ minority; as persuasive as his position in society is, is he not perpetuating destructive stereotypes and hatred against people of northern region?”

“This is either how strong his negative attitudes are against the residents of the northern region or a collaborative mindset of the south and centre against the northerners. It would seem dominance is used relatively here by the president, as good for others and not good when it is the minority having it.”

FOND has asked President Mutharika to stop hiding behind, other people when he says the issue of university education “has favoured people of the northern region and….creating discontent in other areas”.

“Which areas are these which we have never heard of and those that never were in Bakili Muluzi’s government? He must be telling Malawians that he is actually the one who is discontented and the midwife of this infamous policy.

“When we have a government and a president that sits down and statistically dissects a region in such a manner, surely people have a right to ask: what drove him? Is it for the love of the nation or hatred of a people? Of course our president would insist of doing this with good intentions; but FOND believes that this was a decision emanating from a hateful mind. How else did Bakili Muluzi not be discontented for the ten years that he was in power? Can we say he did not have these facts with him? At least Bakili Muluzi tried to correct the cultural factors that contributed to populations in the south having limited access to higher education,” said the statement.

The group therefore  said the route Mutharika has taken, although sold to the nation as well intentioned, is dangerous when applied to a nation that is already polarised and working hard towards unity and nation building.

“Can we build a nation in the environment where citizens are pulling in different direction? And where national leadership is at the forefront sowing seeds of disunity?”

FOND said it has supported the implementation of affirmative action for disadvantaged groups like the girl child and people with physical and mental health limitations.

“For example owing to the amount spent on doing gendered activities, the girl child has a disadvantage over a relatively freer male child who seem to have fewer gendered distracters. One thus would have no objections to have the girl child given a head start. Similarly, for those with disabilities like mobility disabilities and or relapses of mental health problems that persistently interfere with consistency for them to succeed. These require a quota in education too.”

FOND is requesting the government to let Malawians be  “peace loving”.

“We are all Malawians we feel pain the same way; we get affected the same way and it will be sowing seeds of disunity and mistrust among diverse groupings if government went ahead to implement this [quota system].”

The district quota system was first introduced by the late dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi Congress Party in 1988. But it was abandoned following a 1993 court ruling that it was discriminatory and in violation of the fundamental right of Malawian citizens to equitable development through equal opportunities to access higher education, regardless of one’s district or region of origin or ethnicity.

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