APM cannot justify late piecemeal Cabinet: Malawi @50
The Malawi nation has been kept on tenterhooks since President Peter Mutharika was sworn in on May 31, waiting to see what kind of 20-member Cabinet he would cobble together to serve Malawians as was promised in the DPP manifesto.
The task was even made more dramatic after the President chose to name the ministers in piecemeal, starting with Goodall Gondwe at Finance and Economic Planning and then nine more were named on the midnight of last Wednesday before capping it all, again, on the midnight of Sunday.
If Malawians found the President’s new- found penchant for releasing names of his Cabinet peace-meal at midnight, then that was the only surprise as the whole Cabinet is fundamentally not.
It is a collection of the people the President was arrested with two years ago, otherwise known as the Midnight 6, and those that also served the administration of his brother, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, mostly drawn from his stronghold, the Lhomwe belt.
Which leads us to the question: Was the delay necessary especially in view of the fact that the only outside inclusion from the DPP is UDF’s president, Atupele Muluzi, who has been Minister of Energy and Mining?
The rest of the ministers are DPP members or sympathizers who are supposed to be at the beck and call of the President.
When everything is said and done, the President cannot justify any of this sloppiness to Malawians who deserve nothing better than a decisive leader who does everything on time.
We repeat, there is no surprise in this Cabinet apart from the fact that it unprecedentedly lean and we hope it will be kept so for the unforeseeable future to save taxpayers’ money for things that matter to Malawians.
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