Your Honor, allow me to briefly evaluate public service reforms programme, which your party hatched and enshrined into its manifesto.
As you, your Honor—the chairperson of this programme, are putting this once theoretical idea into reality, you honestly deserve to be commended for a job well done so far in showing exceptional leadership in this area. I know that when all is said and done, posterity will surely judge you on these reforms. That judgment will either be in your favour or not but since the game is not yet over, we reserve our verdict on you.
However, if I have to comment on what you have done so far, it remains my sole conviction that you are doing a commendable job.
Your Honor, memories are still fresh of the extraordinary speech you delivered during the launch of the programme at Bingu International Conference Centre (BICC). You may wish to revisit a television recording of your speech to appreciate this. The reaction from members of the clergy, the leader of opposition himself and more importantly even the President himself spoke vigorous tune of this claim. Truth be told, you are, your Excellency, a person of high sense of integrity—indeed a person of high caliber.
In your speech—where your honor, fused with that graphic presentation—can only be compared to landmark speeches made by world class leaders such as the classic UN Speech made by the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu in 2013.
Get this Your Honour: Chilima (C) with Peter Mutharika during the Reforms Launch.
Your Honor, this commendation comes from honest observation other than influenced by ‘bootlicking modulation’. It is a genuine complement.
Turning to the main aim of this letter Your Excellency, I wish to point out that these reforms, you are championing, will be an empty field of style if they fall short of bringing the intended change that this nation badly needs to rotate its wheels of progress.
Critical analysis of these reforms, relative to its outreach, leaves a dark hole within its terrain. Let bitter truth be spelt out here; Your Honor and His Excellency up there have chosen not to be exemplary. This, Your Honor renders the entire mission empty on its operation. In other words, your office and more importantly, the office of the President can’t be preaching about reforms without rendering your crucial offices to the procedure.
It is a cognizance beyond mere speculation that the office of the presidency has no political will as you claim but it’s ever hypocritical! Why starting with a bottom- up instead of an up-bottom approach that would demonstrate seriousness? The insistence to talk reform to the lower offices in the civil service sparks of hypocrisy on the part of the office of the presidency.
Real leaders lead by example and you guys are lacking that feat in these reforms and other advocacy. Do they not say that he who seeks equity must come with clean hands? Your Honor, pretending to make these necessary reforms while throwing sticks and carrots to attain your personal, other than national, ends is not only mockery but glaring cheat to Malawians. We are bound not to tolerate that.
Let me highlight why real reforms are those reforms which must start with the office of the presidency: The most important thing Your Honor is that this will help in service delivery as we will have people who are capable of doing their assigned jobs as these people will be employed on merit and not political patronage as is the case today.
Today, as how it has always been the case since time immemorial, the president has the powers to appoint people in different key positions in our country. Basically, these appointments are based on cronyisms masquerading as been made on merit.
The guiding principle of making such appointments goes like:
“I will appoint in key positions those people—incompetent or not—so long as they helped me win the past election. I don’t care whether they will perfom or not but I guess they will deliver.”
Your honor, how do we expect quality service delivery that way? How do we expect a country to develop that way?
Let me; for instance, pick yourself your Honor as an example: When you were joining politics, it appeared, to elaborate-thinking Malawians, that you had already arranged how your entry would be like. You gave, what I would describe today as, a staged interview with Pilirani Phiri of then Zodiak radio on Tiuzeni Zoona Programme on that other Sunday.
Your Excellency, when your pair ‘won’ the Malawi Presidency, it did not come as a surprise that you quickly drafted in one Pilirani Phiri as your Press Secretary?
Your Honor, if you can be honest with the Malawi nation, can you aver that there was merit in that appointment apart from being an appointment based on political appeasement?
The issue is not about Phiri being incompetent or otherwise, the issue is; did you give an opportunity to equally qualified members of the public to be considered for that job?
And now you guys have the nerve to tell the nation that time for business as usual is over and that we must be doing business ‘unusual!’ Do you expect right-thinking Malawians to be clapping for you when you utter such grade-A trash?
Your Honor, if this will not be reversed, you will go down in history as one of the Malawi leaders who served on empty buoyancy. Leaders who masquerade as loving the nation whilst in true sense, they are members of a cartel that took unfair advantage of Malawi. Self-enrichment, building your own empires, Cronyism at the expense of the poor Malawians is what you our leaders are unfortunately reputed for.
The point am driving home is that the office of the Presidency, in which you are part of, has too much powers. Unfortunately, such power is always used to inflict more pain to the poor Malawians.
You appoint unqualified bootlickers in key government positions simply because they helped you win election and then you start addressing the nation that you want business to be done unusual! This ought to be part of the reforms phenomenon that we would love seeing taking place otherwise, this is taking Malawians for granted as one wonders how a nation could progress that way.
Your honor, that time you reduce the Presidential powers such as those to appoint and fire individuals; that time we will start talking of a better Malawi for all. That will be the time we will be able to appreciate our government.
Your Honor, you have a chance, now. If you guys love Malawi and you are up for national service not personal aggrandizements, then demonstrate to us by first reforming your respective offices, else these reforms are an insult to Malawians.
Your Honor, the conduct of you our leaders make Malawians to be in a perpetual state of mourning. So as one of the mourners, I urge you to pick the important point (s) from this piece and disregard my mourning for did we not establish in our culture to leave the mourner to mourn the way he wants without being faulted?
Your Honor, I must finish by reminding you of the shocking results of a research conducted by Oxford University. It stated that at the rate we conduct our business, this country of ours will develop in 70 years time. This is not a wild claim if we continue having leaders like yourself who talk of business unusual when you mean the same business as usual.
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