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.