One does not necessarily need to be a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) holder to comprehend and interpolate the despair and political dilemma Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and United Democratic Front (UDF) legislators have found themselves in.
It is worth noting at the outset that UDF and DPP ruled this country back to back. Their administrations were characterized by terror (Young Democrats during UDF and cadets during DPP regime), treachery, intimidation, theft and plunder of public resources, nepotism, regionalism and cronyism.
For proximity’s sake, we will focus on the DPP regime. It was during the DPP regime, during the Bingu wa Mutharika administration, that a quota system was introduced to punish and alienate the people from the Northern Region.
His young brother, Arthur Peter Mutharika, perfected the system by ensuring that northerners are not only denied access to higher education, but are also struck off the list of beneficiaries of national development.
Do you need evidence for this? We heard from Francis Mphepo, the DPP Administrative Secretary, at a political rally ahead of the 2019 tripartite elections that APM had directed the withdrawal of all development projects in the Northern Region because its people are ungrateful.
True to his word, the Mutharika administration abandoned all flagship projects in the Northern Region. Some of the abandoned projects include the Mombera University, Mzuzu International Airport, Nkhata Bay-Mzuzu Road, Jenda-Edingeni Road, Nyika-Njakwa Road, M1 Road rehabilitation, among others.
The administration went further to withdraw projects from the Central Region. Notable ones include road projects in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, as Mutharika preferred developing his home districts where he constructed roads everywhere, including footpaths to private homes.
For APM, Malawi meant the Lhomwe-belt districts of Mulanje, Phalombe, Chiradzulu and Thyolo. If you happened to come from a district other than that, your likelihood of you securing a job in the Mutharika administration was nil.
During his administration, APM used youth criminals – who were christened cadets – to reign terror on anyone who questioned his style of leadership.
Memories are still fresh about the over 20 productive young men and women who were mercilessly gunned by the DPP zealots in Mzuzu for simply trying to voice out their concerns.
Even when hunger hits the country, no one dared to say a word for fear of suffering extrajudicial sentencing from the cadets. Have you forgotten already how APM reacted when some courageous Malawians complained about starvation?
Mutharika told them to ‘eat mice and locusts’ because he had no food to feed them.
President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera saw it all; hence, during the campaign ahead of both the 2019 tripartite and Fresh Presidential Elections, he promised that he would treat Malawians with dignity.
When Tropical Cyclone Freddy hit 11 districts in the Southern Region, Chakwera quickly mobilized the resources to respond to the needs of the survivors.
He launched Operation Tigwiranje Manje through which he is raising financial and material resources for the constructions of resilient houses for the survivors in Mulanje, Blantyre and other districts. Dozens of decent houses have been constructed and handed over to the survivors under this initiative.
Within the three years it has been in office, the Chakwera administration has constructed roads in Blantyre such as Angelogoveya – Chiwembe Road, among others.
The incumbent government is also giving the Capital City a facelift by constructing six-lane and four-lane roads that are significantly changing the outlook of the once forgotten city.
And in a complete departure from the insult Malawians received from Mutharika when they cried for food, the Chakwera government is distributing free maize to all starving households.
The distribution of this relief food is taking place in all the districts across the country. In Thyolo, where APM comes from, distribution of the free maize took place at Khonjeni Trading Centre.
But this has not gone down well with DPP and UDF lawmakers who seem to have mastered the art of victimizing and exploiting the poor.
For it was our expectation that members of Parliament (MPs) would support such initiatives, including distribution of relief food and inputs under the Affordable Input Programme (AIP), for the benefit of their constituents.
But that is not the case in areas where lawmakers belong to DPP and UDF. It has been gathered that DPP and UDF legislators are in the forefront frustrating efforts by the government to ensure equal distribution of relief food to the starving households.
In some instances, we have gathered, the opposition lawmakers are conniving with traditional leaders in excluding some families on account of perceived disloyalty to the MPs. Of course, other lawmakers know they have lost people’s trust and they will not retain their seats while others are frustrating the processes to justify their claim that Chakwera has failed to deliver.
These greedy and desperate MPs cannot even appreciate what President Chakwera and his government are doing to uplift the living standards of their people.
But we are not surprised! It is bitterness, greed and desperation that are blurring opposition MPs’ eyes towards Chakwera-engineered development
