Opinion: Has Tonse Alliance Government delivered to the people’s expectations?

An election is a process of voting wherein the general public decides who all should comprise the governing body to work towards the nation in the representative institutions like the Parliament, Legislative bodies etc. each citizen of the country can vote after they attain the age of 18 years.

This discussion was open to people of different political background to bring in their views in the way they look at government’s performance. Here are a few responses from those who shared their opinion.

 

Gecon joined the discussion and had this to say:

 

“Not at all comrade. Infact it has made life so tough, people are failing to buy essential commodities. They are big liars”

 

Peter also said, “Bunch of hypocrites, who were only interested to wrestle power from at least performing DPP led government. They bombarded the masses with lies of promises, yet they have failed miserably to fulfill even a single promise . No policy direction, no privatization. Simply no hope . The Tonse led government has failed.”

 

Jonathan simply gave government a 0% performance.

 

“Tonse Alliance is a huge disappointment. A bunch of crooks and thugs. There is nothing tangible and successful to write about on the well being of many upright Malawian. Many if not everyone, is living below the margin. 2025 is too far.”

 

*Malawi fresh presidential election*

 

Presidential elections were held in Malawi on 23 June 2020, having originally been scheduled for 19 May and later 2 July. They followed the annulment of the results of the 2019 presidential elections, in which Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party had received the most votes.

 

The result of the re-run elections was a victory for Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party, who defeated Mutharika by margin of 59% to 40%.

 

The elections were hailed by observers as being both free and fair but in my view, it was an election full of intimidation and violence especially in the central region where DPP monitors were beaten and chased away from polling centres.

 

As such, the monitoring process of the 2020 election was meant only for MCP especially in most parts of the central region. I don’t believe this amounts to a free and fair election and I also doubt is these facts were available to the observers.

 

*The Hi-5 concept*

 

Firstly, servant leadership is a leadership philosophy built on the belief that the most effective leaders strive to serve others, rather than accrue power or take control. The aforementioned others can include customers, partners, fellow employees and the community at large.

 

I have identified the leadership style of President Reverend Lazarus Chakwera: He is corrupt, incompetent, laissez-faire. Anything goes ! Free for all administration approach. You can steal public resources, I will make a speech as if I am fighting against corruption but don’t worry you won’t get prosecuted, just in case you get arrested, we will discontinue your corruption cases. And of late the president has become a dictator recently.

 

Over the past four years, I have been keenly watching his leadership. The President’s leadership style is the weakest ever and leaves a lot to be desired but at the same time surrounded with a lot of intimidation a guest journalists and critics and violence against the opposition. The current leadership will not help this nation in any way at all but steal our tax payers money and they are also planning to steal the election in 2025 through rigging, they have time and again corrupted the judiciary so that some people are not prosecuted, and bulldoze bills in Parliament at the time when the opposition did not have a valid leader of a position who was always clapping hands for government. Malawi is as good as a nation without a leader today and everybody is ridiculing this nation in the people’s choice. Very unfortunate!

 

The servant leadership ideology is it complete failure because instead of saving the people this government is preoccupied serving itself.

 

Secondly, uniting Malawians simply means there is somewhere where the people are divided. What divides Malawians that we should be talking about uniting them? The cause of inequality is limited access to education leading to inequality in Malawi.

 

A large intermediate contributor to consumption inequality in Malawi is education, especially tertiary education. Tertiary qualifications are unequally distributed in favour of the rich in Malawi.

 

Again Malawians are not being united by this government because, for example, promotions in government are mostly focusing on people of the central region.

 

Thirdly, prospering together Immigrants overwhelmingly choose to migrate to cities; consequently, the local experience plays a defining role in their settlement. Yet, too often, the immigration discourse focuses solely on the levers of national policy as key

instruments in selection and integration.

 

Results from Afrobarometer’s 2022 survey show that three-fourths of Malawians experienced moderate or high lived poverty during the past year, continuing a negative trend that started in 2008. Moreover, the share of households reporting the most severe level of poverty has increased since 2019.

 

I personally feel that Malawians are not prospering together today because the distribution of NEEF loans, subsidized fertilizer is segregative. Malawi Social Cash Transfer Programme is meant for the people of Malembo and Kasiya where each one of them gets up to MWK 800,000 as of April 2024 while other beneficiaries are receiving MWK 150,000 in other areas.

 

Fourthly, ending corruption was one of the most prominent ideologies on the Hi-5 agenda. The Vice President’s arrest in 2022 followed accusations he had received money to influence the awarding of contracts to Xaviar Ltd and Malachitte FZE, two companies linked to British businessman Zuneth Sattar. Mr Sattar also denied any wrondoing. Everyone took the arrest seriously thinking government was indeed serious in fighting corruption. Instead of fighting corruption we saw government fighting the Director General of anti-corruption bureau Martha Chizuma.

 

Early May 2024, Director of Public Prosecutions Masauko Chamkakala filed a notice to the High Court to drop the case in which Chilima had not taken a plea after 18 months.

 

An order from High Court  said all charges Chilima was answering to in connection to the case were dropped. Very disappointing.

 

In my opinion, the Malawi government should have let the case proceed in court if it wanted to be taken seriously in its efforts to curb corruption. And I believe after that decision nobody takes this government seriously anymore.

 

Fifthly and finally, rule of law was popularly mentioned by Chakwera during his campaign. The rule of law is a political ideal that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. It is sometimes stated simply as “no one is above the law”. The term rule of law is closely related to constitutionalism as well as Rechtsstaat. It refers to a political situation, not to any specific legal rule. The rule of law is defined in the Encyclopædia Britannica as “the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a non arbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power.”

 

Unfortunately, The rule of law of the Tonse Alliance Government has failed and is ideal only to selected citizens especially the poor and institutions that are not connected to government. It has been clearly demonstrated  that “some people are above the law”. One good example is of the corruption case involving the vice president as well as other corruption suspect within cabinet who have been left free from arrests and interrogations.

 

In conclusion, the next election is coming in 2025 and it is very paramount that each and every citizen registers in order to vote for the most appropriate presidential candidate who will take Malawi forward. This country must be liberated from the economic mess in which almost everyone is struggling. The big political battle lies between the incumbent President Chakwera and opposition presidential candidate Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika.

 

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