Kaliati says time to stop finger-pointing: ‘Mutharika not to blame for Malawi woes’

Gender minister Patricia Kaliati has told Malawians to stop heaping all blame on the country’s problems to President Peter Mutharika, saying the economic turmoil  the country is facing is an accumulation of factors over the past years since independence.

Kaliati said this at a news conference Monday in Lilongwe on an unrelated matter.

She said the problem has been there for a long time, saying Malawians were accustomed to handout culture which she said the Democratic Progressive Party  (DPP) government has stopped leaving some people bitter.

“We keep pointing fingers at one person years for 31 years, the government was begging from poor Malawians but now it is one person doing everything,” she said, in direct reference to the one party Malawi Congress Party (MCP) rule, a system that allowed the party to force people donate to the head of state Kamuzu Banda who ruled Malawi with an iron fist for over 30 years before the dawn of multi-partyism.

Kaliati therefore asked the government critics to leave Mutharika alone, saying Malawians should not expect their president to change things just at a pressing of a button when these problems have accumulated for a period of years.

However, civil rights activist George Jobe said the government cannot distance itself from problems even if they emanated from previous governments because, he said, government is a continuity of business.

“The government cannot distance itself from the responsibility, it cannot disown challenges that emanated from elsewhere,” said Jobe who is now the executive director of Malawi Health Equity Network, replacing Martha Kwataine.

Kwataine has secured a job with Plan Malawi, an international NGO.

Malawi is beset with severe economic problems compounded with severe food shortages and the situation seems to be getting out of hand by day as local currency the kwacha keeps sliding fast against the dollar, inflation and interest rates are the highest in recent memory forcing the cost of living up.