ASKING PRESIDENT JOYCE BANDA TO RE-DECLARE ASSETS IS SHEER WASTE OF TIME

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.