47 years young: Racing backwards together in chaos and confusion

Written by RAPHAEL TENTHANI

OUT of all the eight Independence Day speeches he has had to make since lodging in State House some seven years ago, I guess last Wednesday's was the most difficult for President Bingu wa Mutharika. I mean, what was there to celebrate when truck-loads of ruling DPP loyalists failed to make it to Mzuzu because there was not enough fuel to take them there? Indeed what was there to celebrate when ESCOM is warning us of six continuous months of extensive load-shedding?

If truth be told, we should have been mourning on July 6, 2011. How does one celebrate when companies are silently retrenching workers because production has ground to a halt not only because of lack of fuel and electricity to power the production machines but also because there is not enough foreign exchange (forex) reserves with which to procure raw materials? Tobacco, the sole reason most of the rural folk smiled for at least a couple of weeks in a year, has now become a source of sorrow. Growers rue the time they leave the auction floors because they know they cannot face their tenants and other creditors for their leaf is not even fetching money enough for a bit of simple merry-making at a Chibuku bar at Kasiya.

The Mutharika administration is also forcing the genie of freedom back in the bottle. Seventeen years after we thought we had unshackled ourselves from the bondage of oppression we are now required to pay huge sums of money even to just exercise one of the most basic of freedoms: the right to complain or celebrate. Even the right to academic freedom is something a quartet of university lecturers must join the unemployment lines for. Even the right to hold an opinion and immortalise the same in a newspaper will attract the wrath of an excitable minister who will slap you with some undemocratic piece of legislation.

Judges too are not immune from the onslaught; wither separation of power!

So how can we cheat ourselves that we are in a celebratory mood when our civil servants cannot protest delays in the payment of their already miserable salaries? How can we make merry when university dons are forced to give mundane examples in lecture halls for fear of the omnipresent Big Brother? How does anyone expect Malawians to celebrate when dad and the boys sleep at service stations waiting for fuel that will not arrive anyway while mum and the girls cannot watch their favourite soaps because there’s no electricity?

How can we be happy to be 47 years old when the Judiciary has to 'reconcile' with the Executive - especially the guy who sits at its helm - for a non-existent dispute? So when courts stop ruling against government we must know the 'reconciliation' appeal has worked? God save us!

Nothing is working in Malawi. Things are bad, so terribly bad that one wonders which country Bingu is president of to have the audacity of dubbing Malawi 'a success story'. If we are ever successful at anything it must be clinging to suicidal policies that banish the majority of us to the jaws of debasing poverty. Bingu made an impassionate case for patriotism. He called upon his critics, especially the opposition and the civil society, to offer suggestions about how to make our country better other than just bashing him left, right and centre.

But it is not as if Bingu has ever suffered a drought in free advice, no. The problem is he has adopted a 'Mr-Know-It-All' stand that he has stuffed cotton in his ears so much that he cannot even hear the advice of an advisory council he himself assembled. Take, for example, the needless deportation of Her Majesty's envoy the other day. For weeks patriotic Malawians, including his advisory council, implored him not to declare Fegus Cochrane-Dyet persona non grata because doing so would certainly have dire consequences. London even directly warned him not "to go that route" but "just work on the concerns" the good diplomat outlined rather than frothing at the mouth at being told the naked truth.

But, like a suicide bomber, Bingu selfishly dared the consequences and sent the poor Brit packing. The result? Not only Great Britain but many other major donors voted with the feet leaving us with a monster of a budget that would make us poorer than we were last year.

By the way, Bingu is right; 47 years after independence we really should be able to stand on our own. But we would have been patting ourselves on our back if the 'zero deficit' budget was not forced down our throat by circumstances. If you think I am lying ask Bingu why with one corner of the mouth he says Malawians must celebrate internally funding their own budget while with the other he is crying to the donors not to abandon us. It is not a secret that government had no choice but to experiment with its people's lives because someone over-priced his pride that he made us throw away the baby with the bath water.

And, politics aside, does it make any economic sense to cling on to an over-valued kwacha even when it buys us next to nothing? Some of Malawi's best brains when it comes to finance and economics matters advised the president that by not devaluing the kwacha he is only chewing on an empty pith whose sugary liquid had already been suckled. But what does he do? He scares us that devaluing the kwacha will hit the poor hard for all prices of goods and services will shoot through the roof. But is he not aware that most commodity prices and service costs have already hit the rafters because the economy has stagnated for reasons already outlined above?

Our over-valued kwacha is only succeeding in making imports very cheap while making it almost impossible to export anything profitably. The poor the Big Kahuna is ostensibly trying to protect will still end up losers as industries are not producing anything therefore they can’t employ people they can’t pay. Economists do not see sense in the Kwacha maintaining its present value. Bingu is just trying to live out his challenge that on his watch the kwacha will not be devalued. But do we run a national economy based an individual's unrealistic ambitions?

It is high time we held Bingu's feet to the fire until he returns to the job we employed him to do. He must admit that his trial and error style of managing the affairs of state is hurting us. He has tried playing tough with tobacco barons by even expelling some of them. But they called his bluff by buying the leaf at ridiculously low prices this season. He wanted to be a macho man with the donors; he is now running back - tail between his legs - begging for deliverance. He dissed the West and courted the Chinese but our new friends from the Orient say they are unable to help us balance our books.

Bingu should stop ruling us and start leading us. He wants us to take whatever he thinks is right for us whether we like it or not. These 'one man' decisions are taking us from the 'Promised Land' of growing at the impressive nine per cent back to the 'Egypt' of failing to buy enough fuel just because some 3, 000 new vehicles are being added monthly on the roads of Malawi. But our cousins in Zambia are importing three times as many vehicles and yet you never hear Rupiah Banda cry blue murder!

If he stopped ruling us and started leading us Bingu would truly walk the talk of this year's theme: "Moving Forward Together with Peace and Stability". But as things currently are, I am afraid the honest theme for our mis-timed celebrations should have read: "Racing Backwards Together in Chaos and Confusion".

Some crazy policies

WHAT part of the brain do those we entrust with coming up with policy directions use when making some of these crazy policy decisions we are hearing of nowadays? I mean, take the folks at MERA for example; one day they say you need permits to buy fuel in jerry-cans or other containers; the next they say we just cheated you of your money; those permits will land you in jail for we have banned the buying of fuel in any other mode other than directly into the tank. C'mon, good people, I think Ken Kandodo should revise the budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Energy for MERA must employ toughies that must carry vehicles that run out of fuel on the roads, tractors, graders, fork lifts, earth moving machines and such like.

And did MERA not get ESCOM’s memo which said we are going the Zimbabwe way of four hours of power a day from now until New Year's Day? Unless someone was sleeping on the job, I think ESCOM must have consulted - or at least informed - MERA about the massive rationing of power for the last time I checked MERA were supposed to be regulators in the energy sector. You do not need to be an economist to know that generators will become the next gas-guzzlers after Bingu's Hammers during these 'dark ages'.

So how do the good people at MERA hope these generators will be supplied with fuel? Or are they engaging a village of plumbers to be uprooting these generators to cart them off to the service stations? And we have boats and diesel maize mills...

Maybe the good people at MERA realised that this fuel crisis is taking a toll on Malawians and thought they should lighten up the situation as this crazy policy directive is too nonsensical it can only be a joke.