Malawi President Mutharika’s 2018 message ‘full of lies and self praises instead of facing the reality’

“Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable you will never be able to truly change at all, because you’ll be forever in the control of things you can’t give up.”– Andy Law-Executive Chairman at Super Communications Inc. and Chairman of Fearlessly Frank, business writer and international speaker.

The year 2017 is now behind us. We are just a few days into a New Year and it is important that we wish each other well in this New Year. Above all else we should wish our country, our mother land, Malawi a very prosperous year in all spheres.

In such a new year, it is important that individually we have to make new resolutions which could see us moving from where we were in the previous year. And I would say it is important that as a nation we should also come up with collective resolutions that would see us not travelling again the road which we travelled in the just ended year. To most of us 2017 has been one of the most painful years, in the recent past. It is a year that personally I would not want to experience again. It is a year that as a country we would not look back with pride as there is nothing that could be pointed at as being our success apart from mere talk and lies from our leaders who in 2014 hoodwinked us into entrusting them with the responsibility of running the affairs of this nation on our behalf.

The just ended year really showed us what sort of stuff politicians are made of. It showed us what it means to be a politician in this country. It is now an open secret that while during the election campaign politicians come to us begging for our votes in the name of having our interests as their major drive to seek political office, in essence their hidden agenda is all about self-interests. The just ended year showed us that even the current ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has nothing on its agenda to suggest that the political calling of most of its leaders is to serve this country and its people. The DPP’s style of leadership has in the past year left us in a political bondage, the party’s arrogance has left us with unbearable pain and regrets as we watched our resources and economy being ruthlessly plundered; as we watched the savagely and the heartlessness that characterized the party and its leadership.

While our leaders continued with the plunder of our resources and the arrogance, 2017 was the year that saw millions of people dying due to continued shortage of drugs in our hospitals and health centres; innocent people being sent to their premature death as a result of the carelessness of a few politicians who believe that their core duty is to ensure that their party remains in government at whatever cost (remember the BICC deaths of innocent and helpless kids and the many road accidents that are said to have claimed 2,500 lives all because of non-maintenance of our roads while contracts to construct new roads are given to incompetent cronies of those in government); and people made to drink water contaminated with human excretes and our cities going for weeks without potable water or electricity with our water boards and ESCOM or EGENCO giving very flimsy excuses while at the same time they gift huge sums of money (the all required resources to make a difference) to the ruling party.

The list of our sorry references of 2017 is so long and this is why as a nation in 2018 we need to make a strong resolve that this is not the road we would want to travel again. Unfortunately, it seems we are not ready to make such a strong resolve as a nation. Starting from our leadership, President Arthur Peter Mutharika himself, it seems we are not ready to face the reality. And I bet come January 2019, if we are not resolute enough we will be writing the same sad story.

I believe it would not be asking for too much to our good President to lead the way in this resolve. However, listening to his New Year message it is doubtful that he is a man who is ready for the task. It seems that the President himself is enjoying the status quo or he has no clue as to what is amiss. Or to some of us we could conclude that he is not man enough to change his character and this is why his New Year message was again full of lies and self praises instead of facing the reality and show that he is ready to tackle the problems that have become part of life in Malawi.

It is laughable for the President to talk of progress, in the year that ended, that we should build on as we get into 2018. Are we sure that the never ending blackouts that are threatening our national economy could be called progress? Are we serious that the many stories of corruption and theft in the just ended year could be classified as progress? To be honest in the just ended year, there is nothing that can give this nation a reason to look forward with hope.

The President talked of taking electricity to most rural places in the country. I believe that at this point in time what matters to Malawians is not how many people have electricity or how many areas are connected to the grid but rather the reliability of the supply to those few people who are connected. It is pointless to brag of numbers while those few who are said to be connected only enjoy the service an average of three days a week. The power shortages of 2017 have been very painful and slowed down businesses and the entire economy, unfortunately with the never ending lies, I am a bit skeptical to believe that this problem will be over in the next twelve months as alluded to by our Dear Professor. Remember, the lies about the generators; why should Malawians believe our President this time around.

As Mutharika rightly put it, nothing works with a bad economy and I wish the President realized that no economy will thrive without consistent power generation. I am sorry to say that with our electricity generation status, Malawi will never rise from being an importing and consuming nation and become a producing and exporting nation. This will remain a vision that we will be sharing for years to come.

Instead of those self-praises and the lies, the President could have brought hope to most of us if he talked on how his government is going to deal with the rampant corruption and heartless theft in his government; how his party is going to deal with the arrogance in its hierarchy; and how he is personally going to change, as our Head State, from showing signs of being clueless, directionless, insensitiveness, incompetent, a pathological liar and heartlessness. These are the major issues that have been haunting Malawi for the past 12 months.

Throughout 2017, the consensus amongst Malawians was that corruption has reached addictive levels; there is a total collapse of law and order; our President is surrounded by wrong people, whose sole mission in government is to enrich themselves while bringing all of us down; and that if nothing is done urgently the power blackouts are here to stay and this would see a catastrophic end to businesses leading to massive an unemployment. Above all there is a general consensus that the foundation of our nationhood has been completely eroded, there is no sense of pride in our nation, even from our leaders including the President himself. These are the issues that as a nation need a rethink in 2018 if we are to make any progress in whatever projects we undertake.

For all Malawians, my suggestion for our collective resolve in 2018 is that let us all, collectively as a nation, take charge of the affairs of this country and our destiny; that is if we want any change of our status. In 2018, lets resolve to start feeling the pain and reacting to that pain, and demanding what we want and belongs to us. We must start getting angry with the state of affairs in this country and take action. Without feeling the pain; without demanding what we want; without getting angry; and without taking action, I see 2018 to be yet another so painful year to us all.

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