I have this overwhelming temptation to cast more than just a cursory glance into the fight — or what passes for one — between the so-called supporters of two presidential aspirants of the United Democratic Front (UDF), musician Lucius Banda and the party’s acting chair, Friday Jumbe.
But my every attempt to read too much into it feels, for lack of a better term, impotent.
You see, that the two Sunday papers last week gave prominence to the match up at Chileka Airport should give one an idea of the enormity of the leadership problem in the party.
Somehow, though, I refuse to be drawn into the feeling that the incident yet proves the indispensability of its former chairman, former president Bakili Muluzi, under whose leadership such fights were unheard of, let alone be countenanced.
Some people hold this view that the fight just shows how much the party has become fractured since the ‘halcyon days’ of a united party (or perhaps, an illusion of one) under Muluzi.
It is a sign of failing fortunes for the party, some would say, but then nothing compares to the all time low set by the “party of death and darkness” (according to the late Chakufwa Chihana), Malawi Congress Party (MCP), when its more liberal minded members made the ingenious discovery that the best way to mend fences was through the panga.
At the height of its leadership problems, when party held conventions to elect the party leader so frequent that the current dearth of one seems very farcical, if not ironical, the MCP held some indaba at Motel Paradise in Blantyre where its members, having disagreed on who was a better leader between John Tembo and Gwanda Chakuamba, were literally at daggers drawn.
It is one of many unsavoury aspects of their history the MCP would like to forget in a hurry.
It is harsh, I know, to compare that piece of MCP’s political thuggery with what happened last Saturday at Chileka Airport where the party’s members went to welcome Muluzi from his medical trip abroad.
And it is for that reason I’m inclined to take the view that the incident at Chileka Airport was a no-brainer and you could say, tongue in cheek, it was some welcome action given that the party has been in doldrums for a while with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party hoggin the limelight.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
No contact, no dialogue
To say Malawian politics is founded on surprises is to accord it a sublime compliment it barely deserves; the oft-predictable twists and turns of the local politics hardly come anywhere near there.
But once in a while, Malawian politics has had the feel of surprise written all over them which seem to inject fresh breath into an otherwise dour routine — like what the so-called taskforce for leadership change in Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has been doing in its ‘running battles’ with the party’s president, John Tembo.
The hapless taskforce is still singing the same, old tired refrain about, for lack of a more forceful term, the need for Tembo, to resign or “the wind of change in the party will change him”.
Heard that one before, haven’t we? And since the last time, nothing has changed, much to our chagrin, and more ruefully, to the taskforce’s.
And if the first time it was uttered it bore the sense of being an inspired thought, spare a tear for the taskforce this time around for it evokes no such emotion. It sounds like it is a sign of helplessness, of desperation, of a group attempting to be relevant by reminding everyone they are very much around, even if only just.
Winds of change was very much the symbol of multiparty democracy activists’ relentless assault on dictatorship and MCP’s own impotency and fallibility (circa 1992). For the taskforce to recycle that clarion call now is as flat as it is an embarrassment to the party itself given its heritage.
True, Tembo is politically well past his sell-by date and he needs to leave the stage but if you ask the Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS), it is hard to deal with products whose shelf life is way gone.
According to MSB, the bureau’s inspectors have felt impotent, by a specific manner of speaking, in carrying out their duties of enforcing standards in shops by confiscating expired products when shop owners have threatened them with the fear of the unknown should they attempt to do so.
The inspectors turn to district commissioners for solutions, who summon chiefs to tell their subjects to remove the threats of the unknown.
I’m not suggesting by any stretch that Tembo has anything to threaten them with, but by and by, the taskforce’s initiative, inspired as it was in the beginning, is becoming to look more like a fight of wimpy children who can only attack their enemies from the safety of distance and retreating at the earliest hint of trouble, even if that is only a gust of wind.
And to think this is the party of the Ngwazi (and I mean the original Ngwazi here) who revered in the twin principles of contact and dialogue! He surely must be turning in his grave at the anarchy in the party that once was the beacon of unity and loyalty, even if much of it was cosmetic.
But for goodness’ sake, let the media be not your battleground, not even your avenue for contact and dialogue. The media, for all purposes and intents, has never been a reliable mphala for settling a crisis; in the wrong hands, it’s one for settling old scores.
The media will feed on the leadership wrangle until the party strangulates itself to a slow, painful death and after that, there be will ironical rebukes of the media’s culpability in the demise of the longest serving party, while others will be self-congratulating for a job well-done in bringing a once mighty institution to shameful end. Silly!
But once in a while, Malawian politics has had the feel of surprise written all over them which seem to inject fresh breath into an otherwise dour routine — like what the so-called taskforce for leadership change in Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has been doing in its ‘running battles’ with the party’s president, John Tembo.
The hapless taskforce is still singing the same, old tired refrain about, for lack of a more forceful term, the need for Tembo, to resign or “the wind of change in the party will change him”.
Heard that one before, haven’t we? And since the last time, nothing has changed, much to our chagrin, and more ruefully, to the taskforce’s.
And if the first time it was uttered it bore the sense of being an inspired thought, spare a tear for the taskforce this time around for it evokes no such emotion. It sounds like it is a sign of helplessness, of desperation, of a group attempting to be relevant by reminding everyone they are very much around, even if only just.
Winds of change was very much the symbol of multiparty democracy activists’ relentless assault on dictatorship and MCP’s own impotency and fallibility (circa 1992). For the taskforce to recycle that clarion call now is as flat as it is an embarrassment to the party itself given its heritage.
True, Tembo is politically well past his sell-by date and he needs to leave the stage but if you ask the Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS), it is hard to deal with products whose shelf life is way gone.
According to MSB, the bureau’s inspectors have felt impotent, by a specific manner of speaking, in carrying out their duties of enforcing standards in shops by confiscating expired products when shop owners have threatened them with the fear of the unknown should they attempt to do so.
The inspectors turn to district commissioners for solutions, who summon chiefs to tell their subjects to remove the threats of the unknown.
I’m not suggesting by any stretch that Tembo has anything to threaten them with, but by and by, the taskforce’s initiative, inspired as it was in the beginning, is becoming to look more like a fight of wimpy children who can only attack their enemies from the safety of distance and retreating at the earliest hint of trouble, even if that is only a gust of wind.
And to think this is the party of the Ngwazi (and I mean the original Ngwazi here) who revered in the twin principles of contact and dialogue! He surely must be turning in his grave at the anarchy in the party that once was the beacon of unity and loyalty, even if much of it was cosmetic.
But for goodness’ sake, let the media be not your battleground, not even your avenue for contact and dialogue. The media, for all purposes and intents, has never been a reliable mphala for settling a crisis; in the wrong hands, it’s one for settling old scores.
The media will feed on the leadership wrangle until the party strangulates itself to a slow, painful death and after that, there be will ironical rebukes of the media’s culpability in the demise of the longest serving party, while others will be self-congratulating for a job well-done in bringing a once mighty institution to shameful end. Silly!
Opposition has never been strong
Abele Kayembe, the ‘leader of opposition’ in Parliament, is an unhappy man — and hapless to boot. His party president, John Tembo, refuses to defer to him; some sections of the opposition he is supposed to lead won’t even refer to him by his ‘rightful’ title or even by name for that matter.
He should have been a happy man, however. It is not everyday that a leader of opposition enjoys the patronage of the party in power and African politics being what they are, bedfellows of ruling parties never want for anything, no, not even a piece of mind, so why should he have lost his in the first place?
However, unease hangs around him and within the last week, he came to the ‘shocking’ conclusion that the opposition in the country is a lame duck; so weak so much so that unless donors come in to the opposition’s aid, it would collapse on the very threshold of democracy on which it was supposed to flourish.
Somehow, I can’t help having this feeling that he is a slow learner; it has taken ages to realise the opposition in the country is weak. No, sir, the opposition didn’t become weak last week, or even a week before that.
The opposition has been a weak institution for quite a long time, since 1994 for that matter when we had it oscillating between reason in one moment and utter tomfoolery the next. Some will point to 2004-2009 as the pinnacle of a strong opposition. Well, it depends on how you look at it.
An opposition that would heckle President Bingu wa Mutharika in one moment, push him to the corner, but scuttle into the safety of darkness when threatened in one way or the other by state machinery or some loudmouths personified in the civil society and the media hardly accounts for a definition of a strong opposition.
But a new low in the politics of opposition came last year and the irony of it all is that Kayembe participated in and was (and still is) a beneficiary of a sham democratic procedure in which government was given the latitude to choose its own opponent.
And that was brought about because a part of the opposition, in a moment of sheer carelessness, had gored itself to death and the other part had sold out — including Kayembe himself — to the so-called mature principles of mature democracy when it cast it lots with a people already possessing power of immeasurable magnitude. And whatever way you look at it, you don’t need a donor to rectify that.
That said, however, the youthful if hopeless ‘leader of opposition’ had a point when he said the civil society and the media have been compromised and they have largely abandoned the post of watchdogs.
Whenever some sections of the civil society (and I mean those that are still alive) have attempted to point one or two ills in government, the response hasn’t been as romantic. They have been vilified with the type of rhetoric that tramples on the very principles of democracy on which the government purportedly operates.
The media? Well, that is another cup of tea altogether. And, yeah, one way or the other, the authorities have done all they can to emasculate the media using some tried and tested means ... but, perhaps, if you get the hint, that’s a discussion for another day, in another environment when the media shall have been removed from the blacklist of complicit bodies against democracy, er, government.
He should have been a happy man, however. It is not everyday that a leader of opposition enjoys the patronage of the party in power and African politics being what they are, bedfellows of ruling parties never want for anything, no, not even a piece of mind, so why should he have lost his in the first place?
However, unease hangs around him and within the last week, he came to the ‘shocking’ conclusion that the opposition in the country is a lame duck; so weak so much so that unless donors come in to the opposition’s aid, it would collapse on the very threshold of democracy on which it was supposed to flourish.
Somehow, I can’t help having this feeling that he is a slow learner; it has taken ages to realise the opposition in the country is weak. No, sir, the opposition didn’t become weak last week, or even a week before that.
The opposition has been a weak institution for quite a long time, since 1994 for that matter when we had it oscillating between reason in one moment and utter tomfoolery the next. Some will point to 2004-2009 as the pinnacle of a strong opposition. Well, it depends on how you look at it.
An opposition that would heckle President Bingu wa Mutharika in one moment, push him to the corner, but scuttle into the safety of darkness when threatened in one way or the other by state machinery or some loudmouths personified in the civil society and the media hardly accounts for a definition of a strong opposition.
But a new low in the politics of opposition came last year and the irony of it all is that Kayembe participated in and was (and still is) a beneficiary of a sham democratic procedure in which government was given the latitude to choose its own opponent.
And that was brought about because a part of the opposition, in a moment of sheer carelessness, had gored itself to death and the other part had sold out — including Kayembe himself — to the so-called mature principles of mature democracy when it cast it lots with a people already possessing power of immeasurable magnitude. And whatever way you look at it, you don’t need a donor to rectify that.
That said, however, the youthful if hopeless ‘leader of opposition’ had a point when he said the civil society and the media have been compromised and they have largely abandoned the post of watchdogs.
Whenever some sections of the civil society (and I mean those that are still alive) have attempted to point one or two ills in government, the response hasn’t been as romantic. They have been vilified with the type of rhetoric that tramples on the very principles of democracy on which the government purportedly operates.
The media? Well, that is another cup of tea altogether. And, yeah, one way or the other, the authorities have done all they can to emasculate the media using some tried and tested means ... but, perhaps, if you get the hint, that’s a discussion for another day, in another environment when the media shall have been removed from the blacklist of complicit bodies against democracy, er, government.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)