Quota system blues

It has been a long while since the debate on the quota system started and it shows no signs of letting up — with twists and turns along the way, some of which are enlightening while others are outright ridiculous.

But what started as a serious and innocent debate on a matter of sharing the national cake equally has degenerated into a tribal tiff, with even President Bingu wa Mutharika himself getting sucked up in the tribal mud.

That the quota system has been established to right some wrong (perceived or real) is no sin, no, no sin at all if the reasons be right and you could say the president is within his limits to champion it.

President Mutharika then goes ahead to quote figures to justify his adoption of the quota system, some of which are as illuminating as they are confusing and only help in stockpiling the sense of suspicion to the whole saga.

First, he says the civil service is overpopulated with people from the Northern Region at the super scale in the government, which should be immoral if malicious intent can be proved in the matter. He buttresses his point on the quota system and the overpopulation in government with statistics which no doubt he should be privy to — which is no problem if the figures be right.

But he doesn’t stop there. He minutes, in detail, about how nepotism has eaten into Mzuzu University where people from the Northern Region dominate. Then he also throws into the mix how a region that has 12 percent of the national population and contributes only 20 percent to the economy should dominate places at the public universities.

Which, if you look at it closely, should be no problem at all. After all, as president, he must balance the national cake and if one region takes what ‘doesn’t belong’ to it, he has every reason to come to the rescue.

Then, out of the blues, he singles out an obscure Mzuzu Corner, which, before this week, was largely unknown beyond Chancellor College. If he were not president, I should have laughed at him all the way to his retirement day but he’s a president and an old man at that. And our culture demands that we must defer to our elders.

But anyone who knows Chancellor College very well should be either laughing at or feeling sorry for Mutharika. Mzuzu Corner is a sophisticated piece of ludicrous fiction which should never be peddled by anyone in that venerable office.

Mzuzu Corner is some place outside a cafe at Chancellor College where — to my knowledge — no lecturer visits for any other purpose, let alone do the unthinkable of leaking examinations to students.

We know the country faces a pervasive problem of examination cheating at primary and secondary school levels but to take it up further to the university is outright ridiculous. By making this accusation, Mutharika is casting aspersions on the academic abilities of graduates from the northern region and the moral uprightness of lecturers from the region.

I’m inclined to believe the president is being sarcastic or someone is deliberately misguiding the president. It reminds me of one of Aesop’s fables about an emperor who walked naked in the streets, in the vain belief he was wearing a very expensive attire after being conned by two swindlers.

The swindlers declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined whose material had the quality of being invisible to any man “who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.”

Thus, the king, having being duped, ‘wore’ the attire and walked in the streets of his kingdom to show off his ‘expensive garment’, when, in sooth, he was walking about butt naked!