{"id":3571,"date":"2011-07-13T13:48:18","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T13:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=3571"},"modified":"2011-07-13T13:48:18","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T13:48:18","slug":"even-opposition-have-nothing-to-offer-malawi-jimmy-kainja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/13\/even-opposition-have-nothing-to-offer-malawi-jimmy-kainja\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Opposition Have Nothing to Offer Malawi | Jimmy Kainja"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having Malawi \u201copposition\u201d calling for president Bingu wa Mutharika to resign for the dire political and economic situation in Malawi is just as ridiculous as it can be. It is natural in politics that parties in opposition take opportunity to gain political ground when a ruling party is not performing well. Yet the opposition in Malawi have nothing to offer.<\/p>\n

In his call for Mutharika\u2019s resignation, Fahad Assani mentioned everything conceivably wrong with Mutharika\u2019s administration but he did not say a single word of what he would do get the country out of the current mess were he to be in power. With lack of fuel, scanty electricity supply, lack of forex, declining democratic freedoms and deteriorating international relations with some of Malawi\u2019s traditional donors, occurring simultaneously, this is the lowest Malawi has ever been. It is a difficult time for the majority of the population. This, understandably make people angry. Anger makes people irrational and the danger of irrationality is that most people are likely to accept any available alternative. Viable or not, so long as it is not DPP, Mutharika\u2019s party.<\/p>\n

Assani seem to be aware of this and he wants to capitalise on it.\u00a0I have argued before\u00a0that the current problems facing Malawi are systematic as they are systemic. Power is too centralised in Malawi; the president calls all the shots, institutions around the executive are not empowered to keep checks and balances on the president. This has played a key role into what Malawi has become. The system has given Mutharika total impunity. These are systemic problems that wont go even if Mutharika was to resign today. So before people start jumping on Assani\u2019s bandwagon, we need to analyse what has gone wrong first and correct those mistakes so we may repeat them.<\/p>\n

Assani reportedly\u00a0said:<\/p>\n

Malawians \u00a0are suffering more now because of what President Bingu wa Mutharika is doing in\u00a0 this country as his \u00a0government is worsening the poverty levels of the people\u2026 Maize mills in villages and engine fishing boats are not working because there is no diesel\u2026 We put money in the budget for boreholes, but we can\u2019t see them on the ground\u2026 There are no drugs in hospitals\u2026 tobacco sales are the worst\u2026 Bingu\u2019s Government has introduced heavy taxes on the poor.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is sort of rhetoric that will definitely resonate with a lot of Malawians, including some of those in the ruling party. Yet we must remember that there is no trusted politician \u2013 opposition or incumbent. They are all friendly when they want your help (votes), they forget all this once in power. Let us not forget that all the MPs disregarded the massive problems Malawi is currently going through and tabled a bill to double their own salaries. The best way to deal with it is to restructure the system in order to make elected officials more accountable.<\/p>\n

\"\"Written By : Jimmy Kainja
\nSource : http:\/\/jimmykainja.co.uk\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having Malawi \u201copposition\u201d calling for president Bingu wa Mutharika to resign for the dire political and economic situation in Malawi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[300,220,984,985,258],"class_list":["post-3571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-democracy","tag-fahad-assani","tag-mutharika-resign","tag-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}