One of prominent issues to have emanated
from the January 17 demonstrations, apart from poor patronage resulting in
Malawi leader Mrs Joyce Banda getting the last laugh, is the petition the organisers
handed to city fathers in the three major city councils who then were supposed
to hand it to the President’s office for consideration I suppose.
The petition has seven points which the
organisers led by Consumer rights activist John Kapito want President Mrs.
Banda to implement within a 21-day period.
While
the demonstration itself was described by the organisers as successful, it is
the government’s response through Information Minister Moses Kunkuyu that
attracted my attention. He told the media: “Frankly speaking, I cannot
say whether we will be able to address all the concerns or not in 21 days. What
is important is for both sides to sit down and find better ways of addressing
these problems; we shouldn’t work in isolation. All along we have been calling
for dialogue and now that the petition has been presented I hope it’s the best
opportune time to start talks in a bid to address the issues raised because
they are legitimate.”
This sort of response not only does it represent Joyce
Banda’s willingness to address the economic malaise the country is facing, but
also it shows her administration has huge respect for concerns raised by every
Malawian including those in minority.
With the 21-day ultimatum still standing, it is very
surprising to see one of organizers of the demonstrations, Ben Chiza Mkandawire
taking to social networks demonizing the president by instigating Malawians to
do something if she does not declare her assets.
By the way declaration of assets is one of thorny issues
the non-state actors want to see the president acting willy-nilly.
I do respect Mr. Mkandawire’s right to go to that level,
but by virtue of being the one who led the Lilongwe protesters to deliver the
petition at Lilongwe City Council offices, I expected him to be more reasonable
and mature in his handling of the whole issue. After his recent salvo against
the president, many people including me are now wondering whether the
demonstration is being done in good faith for the betterment of Malawians or
rather somebody somewhere is busy playing a vendetta game.
Anyway, I, for one, would have loved to see the
President re-declaring her assets yesterday only if it is in the interest of
Malawians not just one or two individuals who seem to have a barrage of scores
to settle against the her.
As a layman on legal matters, I did try to ask at least
five friends who are practicing lawyers on their input about the whole
hullabaloo and it is interesting that only one said there are enough grounds
for JB, as the president is fondly known, to declare all her assets on the
basis that she is now the Head of State and no longer Vice President.
While the other four legal experts were straight forward
in their responses saying re-declaring assets is not necessary on the grounds
that after next elections an evaluation would have been made of her on how she
has amassed her wealth within the five year period [2009-2014].
I don’t know which one to believe but I’m very much
certain there are so many conflicting schools of legal thought out there for
both proponents and opponents of the issue in question.
In my capacity, as citizen of this Republic, the
argument I’m holding is that asking the president to declare her assets is very
mischievous and is of no benefit to poor Malawians.
Such is the case because we have had two instances
whereby our two post multi-party heads of state in this case; Dr. Bakili Muluzi
and Prof. Bingu wa Mutharika fulfilled their constitutional requirement by
declaring their assets when they were assuming office in 1994 and 2004
respectively.
However, the two distinguished statesmen left office
with billions of assets one would have never imagined and very difficult to
justify.
Legally, I’m of the view that the two gentlemen are
innocent until a competent court of law proved otherwise.
So my question to those propagating for re-declaration
of assets by JB is that, what has Malawi benefited from Muluzi’s gesture of
doing so? Without being personal, but this is the same politician who in his
bid to become president he was nearly declared bankrupt and had to rely on his
former ally and successful business James Makhumula to pay for him a sum of
MK50 000 lest he could have been disqualified by the electoral body.
We all know how such a person got out of office and I
don’t want to waste time explaining all that. However, the fact still remains
that within a decade, Muluzi moved from rags to swimming in billions with a
network of business empires throughout the world.
As for Mutharika, we’re told his entire family’s fortune
[not his wealthy alone] was pegged at MK150 million in 2004. And eight years
later isn’t it surprising that the man became multimillionaire at least by US$
dollar standards?
There are so many factors I can attach to prove my case
but the most prominent one is the bags of US dollars believed to be in the
legion of around $35 million that were found at State House in April last year
soon after his death. Of course he did declare his assets so I assume there is
no fuss about it.
Now having looked at these two different scenarios is it
not being lunatic to continue asking our leaders to declare assets even if it
is evident that the moment they leave office there will be nobody to pin them
down to explain how they handled their finances?
According to former president of Nigeria Olusegun
Obasanjo, Africa as a whole has lost close to $150 billion through embezzlement
by our top citizens.
He observed that such leaders’ pilfering is the main
reason why Africa remains the poorest continent despite having vast resources
more than America, Asia and Europe combined.
In this case then if Malawi had strong institutions in
place then would have been easier to probe how our leaders have amassed all the
wealth they have and if it is found that there was foul play somewhere let
those institutions do their job to repatriate such monies that are normally
stashed in offshore accounts.
As it stands now Malawi institutions ranging from Fiscal
Police, MRA, Financial Intelligence Bureau, ACB etc have no capacity to ‘go
deeper’ and exhume where our leaders hid their billions and how they got them.
Yes, I agree, by re-declaring assets JB would instill
confidence in some sectors of the society but as things stand she is not
breaking any rules because the constitution does not say when a vice president
assumes office after the death of sitting president then s/he should re-declare
assets.
If she decides to declare her assets for the second time
in four years, well, that will be out of her own concession not that the rules
of the game allows her to do it twice.
Still something is bothering me that what will happen if
she ends her 12 years in office in 2024 with trillions? Exactly, nothing will
happen and it will be no big deal just like it is no big deal with Mutharika’s
billions allegedly stashed in Portugal, Singapore, China, Zimbabwe, Dubai, and
Hong Kong.
As for me what must start is for proper mechanisms to be
put in place so that the country has capacity to monitor how our leaders are
acquiring wealth. Mind you, it is possible for a leader to accumulate billions
using legitimate means thus not every billion accrued is stolen.
Until that is achieved then I will support whosoever
agitates for any sitting president to declare assets. This also goes to the
vice presidents as well because for instance we were told how much Dr. Justin
Malewezi and Dr. Cassim Chilumpha were worthy when they took office but what we
have not been told is how much did they make during their stint? I hope we’re
together there?
It is not just a matter of protesting against JB to
declare her assets, that’s not enough and it is total waste of time. If those
pushing for this issue are clever, let them lobby parliament to come up with
stringent measures that would be used as monitoring mechanism to track down any
movement of money to foreign accounts.
Once that is put in place let the first assignment be to
find out how true are allegations that Muluzi and Mutharika have off shore
accounts and possibly go to a mile further to probe the kind of business they
ventured into so that some of our young entrepreneurs can borrow leaf and take
that as a model for them to do the same.
Surely we can all be inspired to run a business that can
rake in billions in just 10 years of operating it.
Once again, stop bragging around about taking to streets
again for issues that will not bring any difference to Malawians. Instead, find
ways of how to repatriate our billions that are sleeping peacefully in places
like Swiss Capital, Geneva than wasting your time trying to undermine JB’s
authority.
By the way I’m just being reminded that a recent European Commission report
estimates that “stolen African assets equivalent to more than half of the
continent’s external debt are held in foreign bank accounts.” That is food for
thought.
