Mutharika wants feedback on proposals to tackle Malawi ‘intellectual crisis’
President of the former ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Peter Mutharika has asked his party members to give him feedback on the policy proposals he made in his acceptance speech after being the party’s leader.
Speaking to the delegates to the first-ever elective DPP convention in his acceptance speech after beating his challenger, Speaker of the National Assembly Henry Chimunthu Banda with landslide vote, said he had circulated his comprehensive speech document to delegates to give back their feedback.
“I want you to write me, you can text me or even call me on your ideas on the policy proposals I have made,” said Mutharika.
In the speech obtained by Nyasa Times, Mutharika, younger brother to former late president Bingu wa Mutharika, said Malawi is facing “intellectual crisis” that must be tackled by the country’s education system.
“Our problem is that we try to develop but we don’t believe that Malawi is capable of becoming a country like Britain, Japan, China or the USA. And because we don’t believe, we don’t have the vision,” said Mutharika
Mutharika declared that he knows how Malawians can “transform our education system” and use it to create a new collective brain for socio-economic development.
“We will form the education system and align it with the values we want to see. We must cultivate the economic values we desire; the values that we need to become a producing rather than a consuming country; the political values in which our children must grow up; and the developmental values that must shape the character of our nation.
“And we need a nation character in which love for another is deeply part of our humanity,” said Mutharika.
Confident of “getting back government in 2014”, the DPP president who is a former law professor in the United States also points out DPP will phase out the “spirit of dependency and hand-outs” so that every Malawian can afford the means to produce food while earning the dignity of labouring to feed themselves.
“We will march forward, and return to the Green Belt project; and turn Malawi into bread basket of Africa. Just as ancient ones did with the Nile River in Egyptian Civilization; and so shall we do with Lake Malawi and the Shire River,” he asserts.
According to Mutharika, Malawi has become a nation that begs to feeds its people.
He promised to “ build top star” hospitals with state of the art equipment with the help from German, construct world-class universities including community colleges with technical education programmes.
Critics fear Peter Mutharika is a shadow of his brother, former president Bingu wa Mutharika whose dictatorial ending compelled donors to freeze aid and left Malawians rioting against rising cost of living, shortage of fuel and forex as well as disappearing democratic principles.
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