A CRYING SHAME

I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel shame. I was both amused and embarrassed by the new message in my Inbox. “Malawi’s newly-elected President, Bingu wa Mutharika has ordered Parliament to move to a bombed-out sports complex so he can make it his official  residence,” the BBC article sitting in my incoming mail stated. The reason, the BBC said, according to the President’s chief of staff: “The President needs enough room.” Wa Mutharika, the e-article added, elected in May this year, wanted to transfer from his residence to the Malawian Parliament, as part of his attempt “to streamline government operations.”

“Wait a minute,” I mused as I read the electronic announcement. “We, the 2020 nation, are now looking like Malawi? We really reach.”
I was without a doubt ashamed for my country, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, alleged “hub of the Caribbean,” pretender to the FTAA throne. But I was also laughing, the irony was so great. No offence to any Malawians  reading my column, but Malawi, located in southern Africa, doesn’t have the best of records in democracy or development. By declaring his intention to move into Trinidad and Tobago’s Parliament, TT’s Prime Minister Patrick Manning had put his country in the same category as Malawi.

This was no  compliment. Malawi emerged from 30 years of dictatorship just ten years ago, in 1994. Its democratic institutions are described by most international  organisations as young and fragile, and the executive branch is said to be dominant because of decades of authoritarian rule. Corruption and wild government spending under former President Bakili Muluzi caused the IMF, the European Union, the World Bank, and the governments of Britain and Denmark to suspend budgetary support to Malawi. Malawi, by all indicators, is one of the poorest, most underdeveloped states in the developing world. The UNDP’s  Human Poverty Index 2003 ranked Malawi 162 out of 175. (TT was at number 54)

An estimated 80 percent of Malawi’s population of 11 million has to get by on less than one US dollar a day. Malawi depends on tobacco for the bulk of export earnings; it has a high population growth rate, low levels of education, low life expectancy, high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and high infant mortality rate. Basically Malawi is what Trinbagonians would crudely call “backward.” That’s the country with which TT could now be twinned thanks to  its Prime Minister and his deputy, Senator Dr Lenny Saith. I decided to closely inspect the BBC’s photograph of President Wa Mutharika to see if he resembled TT’s Prime Minister or rather; to ascertain whether our PM could possibly have Malawian roots. There were no obvious physical similarities between the two men, but there were enough uncanny parallels in their recent political careers to make me think the two men could be executive blood brothers. According to the BBC report, Wa Mutharika, like Manning, had been voted into office after promising to fight rampant state spending and corruption. In June this year the Malawian ruler announced that  “no politician, no minister, no public servant,” even those in his own  party, would escape if he/she was found to be corrupt. Wa Mutharika had gone a step further in the anti-corruption fight than Manning however, because he was using his office as he promised to strengthen anti-corruption measures, not to water them down.

While Wa Mutharika is busy clamping down on the excesses of those around him — on July 30 the deputy research director of Wa Mutharika’s ruling United Democratic Front (UDF), Humphreys Mvula was arrested on charges of corruption, fraud and tax evasion — Wa Mutharika however, is unwilling to curb his own immoderation. The new Malawi President, as if he were Manning’s  twin, has announced without the slightest bit of consultation with the populace or the legislature, his intention to take over the US$100 million New State House that has housed Malawi’s Parliament since 1995. Though the Parliament includes a supermarket for its 193 MPs and parliamentary staff, as well as a school, he is sending the entire legislature package packing to a stadium bombed by the army in 1993. And just like Mr Manning, the new Malawi President is abusing his power and isn’t listening to anyone, although it is estimated that a fortune will have to be spent to renovate the bombed sports institute into a habitable place and to convert the Parliament into a presidential palace, a fortune that  Malawi cannot afford.

He isn’t listening although the last message the Malawian President needs to send to his people and to the international community is that Malawi’s new leaders like all the others that came before them have no sense of fiscal responsibility, possess little respect for democracy or for a fundamental constitutional principle: Parliament is  responsible for all actions incidental to and necessary for the proper  exercise of its functions. Wa Mutharika, as Manning, wants his country’s Parliament and Wa Mutharika, like Manning, intends to have it, even if his people need him to spend the millions the move will cost on their education,  health, jobs and on boosting the economy. Wa Mutharika will probably get his way. Totalitarianism is deeply entrenched in Malawi. Whether Manning gets his is up to the people of TT. I never thought the day would come that a TT leader’s attitude and conduct would so closely mirror that of an African chieftain’s. I won’t ever be able to look at the Red House again without thinking about Malawi’s New State House, at Patrick Manning without recalling President Bingu wa Mutharika. And I’ll never be able to hear the name Malawi without feeling convinced it should be spelt “Malawe,” as in “us.” It’s a crying shame.
suz@itrini.com  <mailto:suz@itrini.com>