Some responses are ‘corrupt’

On Wednesday last week, the Global Integrity, an international think-tank, released a report about the situation of corruption in Malawi and other countries in the world. Trust me, it was not flattering.

It was by no means unique. Transparency International, among other international bodies, has had issues with the status of graft in the country.

What was not too surprising was the response by the Anti-Corruption Bureau’s director, Alex Nampota, to the findings, which he deemed empty as they were not supported by data.

The report had specifically singled out Malawi’s fight as lopsided, targeting mostly the lowly civil servants at the expense of the big fish. And Nampota hit the roof at that.

“We have investigated all sectors of the society. We have investigated [the] former president, former ministers, [emphasis mine] principal secretaries and even the lowest level civil servant,” Nampota was quoted by The Daily Times of Wednesday last week.

Who are these people? Former president Bakili Muluzi, former secretary of treasury Milton Kutengule, former education minister Yusuf Mwawa and some usipa too numerous to be cited here.

Now, now, now, Muluzi, Kutengule and Mwawa don’t amount to that much to count for real big fish. In fact, one of the shortfalls of the report is that it fell short of singling out political cronyism as holding more sway than the nature of the crime itself.

Muluzi’s woes in the infamous K1.7 billion case began after he had broken ranks with President Bingu wa Mutharika. After the much maligned promise of protection from prosecution by Mutharika to Muluzi in the run-up to the 2004 elections, one wonders what would have come out of it had Muluzi played ball after the polls.

Mwawa was at the time of his arrest and conviction very much a UDF guy in a DPP government and the ACB had the media largely to thank for in that case.

Kutengule? Over four years and with all assurances that government has enough evidence but his case is moving in no direction at all and when you couple that with rumours that some really big fish knows one or two things about the K20 million Kutengule is alleged to have diverted, you don’t get surprised at all.

So, which big fish is Nampota referring to? How many suspected case of bona fide DPP members, the big fish, have been investigated to their logical conclusion? Nix! The Vwaza Marsh Concession investigation is taking far too long to be concluded, among other cases, and that case involves some big fish in the DPP.

Until the ACB nets the real big fish, not some matemba or usipa, reports by bodies like the Global Integrity and Amnesty International will always be a headache for the graft busting body.

...and Ntaba goofs again

And talking of needless defences, DPP publicity secretary Hetherwick Ntaba never runs out of rejoinders to anything even that is way over his head.

The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation and Eye for Development took to task President Bingu wa Mutharika to withdraw his statement he made that DPP youths would be prioritised in the Youth Enterprise Development Fund.

The president’s statement was callous, in bad taste, discriminatory and hardly befitting a head of state of Malawi on a matter touching on national policy.

Malawians of all political persuasions sweat to contribute their taxes into the fund and so why Mutharika become so DPP when it comes to sharing the cake around?

Ntaba, however, felt otherwise. For starters, so said Ntaba, the president was being open in his discrimination unlike ‘others’ who are not. Further, like any responsible parent, the president is taking care of his own first, the members of the DPP, before MCP, UDF, Aford, MDP, MDU, etc, can have their turn.

Well, discrimination is discrimination by any definition; whether someone celebrates it or goes about stealthily or is hypocritical about it is neither here nor there.

There are moments when Mutharika is the leader of the DPP but we expect him at all times to act as the president of the country which has DPP followers, UDF supporters, MCP zealots, Aford fanatics, a lone MDU member ... and surely there was no better moment for him to put country first before party than this. But he blew it away (pun intended).

We know some fathers are irresponsible but Mutharika, irrespective of his prejudices against other groupings, was elected to be a father of the nation and to act one like when the occasion demanded — as it did on this one.

We don’t get discriminated when paying taxes, so why should the colour of my politics matter when we have to share the spoils around?