If I were Peter Mutharika: Tenthani’s Muckracking…

“I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion; The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other” -Napoleon Bonaparte

If I were President Peter Mutharika I would not have allowed myself to be reduced to a cartoon to commemorate a misadventure that should never have happened.

Indeed if I were Peter I would have realised that no matter how often I describe my treason case as ‘stupid’ I would never erase the fact that I presided over machinations to usurp constitutional order during those “three mad days in April”.

In fact I would thank my stars that I live in a not-so serious country that would allow somebody with an un-discharged serious case to stand for an election, any election.

As a veteran constitutional law professor and a jurist of international repute, I should be the last to use an irreverent term ‘stupid’ on charges proffered by a legally-constituted office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I would know that the best way to profess innocence would be to allow due process of the law to take its course.

I should be ashamed, if I were Peter, that my treason charge was dropped before my innocence was tested in a legally-constituted court just because I won an election.

If truth be told the Democratic Progressive Party’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ jamboree in Lilongwe last week was as ill-advised as it was misguided. Who or what was liberated that March 11 day? If anything was liberated on that day it was infamy, infamy to break the law and get away with it.

Millions of tax-payer’s kwacha were spent on an event that was akin to the Polytechnic ‘fun day’.

What were we celebrating, by the way? That a band of treasonous people beat the rap just because they live in a country so petty that they were allowed not only to participate in – but also to win – an election?

Look, how could a whole president reduce himself into defacing a wall with graffiti of ‘Prof. Peter Mutharika was here”? That belongs to yobs high on cheap sachetted liquor!

Malawi is currently saddled by myriad problems for its CEO to waste time on teenage antics.

And how could Peter celebrate mob justice when he repeated his fantastical fairy-tale that somebody sent fake doctors to inject him with poison? He said when the ‘doctors’ failed to produce IDs his so-called ‘morale youths’ beat them up to a pulp.

He even went one further to say one of them, an intelligence chief – according to him, spent a month in hospital. This means the identities of his would-be assassins are known. Why is he not taking them to court?

The nation has a right to know a band of assassins that is out to eliminate people. If Peter was privileged to have a band of thugs that beat up his would-be assassins to a pulp, the next target would not be as privileged. As a good citizen Peter should stop these assassins’ murderous antics by exposing and jailing them.

Or, perhaps – to borrow from the President’s own irreverent unpresidential parlance, this is another ‘stupid’ allegation that has no foundation?

Peter and the Gang, for that is what they qualify to be called, should thank Malawi’s lethargic legal system for delaying their treason case.

I do not have to be a lawyer to know that something was afoot between April 5 and 7, 2012. The procrastination with the announcement of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s death was a calculated move. A report by a commission headed by a reputed Supreme Court judge cannot be dismissed as ‘stupid’.

In fact, if Peter and the Gang could not be fingered for treason, certainly they were culpable of concealing death – a felony in itself. Air-lifting Bingu’s cadaver to South Africa was clearly concealing death.

If I could I would, therefore, advise my good president against ever again being fooled into commemorating the March 11 madness. I would also realise that putting graffiti on walls, be they of prisons or schools, is for misguided yobs high on something not exactly legal.

If I were President Peter Mutharika I would also realise that if I catch someone breaking the law I must hand them over to lawful authorities for due legal process of the law to take place. I would realise that laughing that ‘anawatibula kwambiri’ (they were beaten senseless) is savagely un-presidential.

What happened last week was a new low for Malawi. President Mutharika has the serious business of running the affairs of state. He should not be swayed into kow-towing to every prank low-lifers in his party want to engage in.

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