Muluzi believes President Banda can change Malawi
Malawi’s former president Bakili Muluzi says he strongly believes that the new Head of State Joyce Banda popularly known as JB, would within a short period of time address most of the problems which the country has been facing during the Mutharika administration.
In an exclusive interview monitored on Radio Islam Muluzi said president Banda is a visionary leader and know what to do to bail out Malawians from the pangs of poverty largely caused by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP)poor economic and governance policies that forced donors to suspend aid.
“I am very optimistic that the new government would solve the problem facing the country within two years. And I will tell you why. There are things which can be done in both short and long term. You know that all donors withdrew aid to Malawi. What the new government needs to do is to reconcile with all the donor partners secondly the Malawi Kwacha cannot remain where it is now and the zero-deficit budget we are talking about can’t work” said Muluzi.
He said since 40 percent of the country’s budget has been coming from donor it was naive for the DPP government to have 40 percent money drawn from people in its zero-deficit budget.
“This is laughable because you are doing now is to drain the local people by heavily taxing them high and overpricing the commodities and one needs to look at these things very critically and address them as quickly as possible.
“I strongly believe that President Banda is very visionary and knows all this and that’s why I believe she can bail out Malawi from the problem we are facing,” he said.
However , Muluzi says as the former president he is ready to assists President Banda by offering advice.
“I have mentioned to Her Excellency Joyce Banda that I will be very willing to assist for the sake of the country”.
Muluzi said it was just unfortunate that the DPP did not recognize the office of the former president and the role which he had played to assist them in a number of ways.
“I remember two or three months ago I offered myself to assist in solving the fuel crisis but they told me that if I want to assist I should come to newspapers and give my advice. I felt that that’s not the way to run the government. You can’t advise the government through the media you advise in closed doors”.
Opportunists
Commenting on DPP members who are quitting the party for Banda’s People’s Party, Muluzi reiterated what he told a local daily newspaper that if he were Joyce Banda, he would be very careful in dealing with people like that.
“What I found more strange, is that the body of the late president has not yet come back to Malawi, it has not been viewed, it has not been buried; now you want to tell me that you would want to leave at this time? Four days after president Mutharika your father died? I find that very un Malawian.”
He said what he would have expected of the DPP cabinet ministers and parliamentarians, since the late president Mutharika was their father and now has died is to wait until the burial before they make any move.
“In my analysis these people are looking for something else rather than assisting President Joyce Banda”.
But Banda had told a press conference on Tuesday that those who want to join her Party should go through the party’s secretary general and not through making announcements on radios as DPP cabinet ministers and parliamentarians were doing.
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