Chaima has argued that the action taken by DPP legislators shows that DPP lawmakers do not understand their roles and responsibilities in the august House.
The analyst, who made the sentiments during the Kulinji Programme aired on Times Radio Malawi on Monday morning, seemed to agree with social issues commentator Wati Mkandawire who described the dressing in sack clothes by MPs as a mockery to the poor.
Mkandawire argued that the beautifully-tailored sack suits that the honourable men and women in parliament wore did not represent a true reflection of poverty.
“The irony! Please don’t mock the poor. There are better ways of protesting against wrong policies and be on the side of the poor rather than using allowances to show you can afford throwing away taxpayers’ money,” he argued.
But in Kulinji Programme on Monday, one of the DPP lawmakers, Yusuf Nthenda, defended their action, saying it was a sign of displeasure and dissatisfaction with President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera’s administration.
Nthenda said there was no other better to present their grievances than to dress in sackcloth to signify the suffering among their constituents.
However, some Malawians have condemned the action, describing it as a joke. They argued that such garments are paired with ashes and worn as an act of penance.
“So calling such dressing a protest is a bit of misnomer since such dressing has a different meaning and sense. All in one, the dressing misled,” said one of the social media commentators on News and Reports Forum.
On his part, Chaima said what the DPP members of Parliament did was a misnomer and an act of desperation to pretend to the world that they do care about the suffering of poor Malawians.
He said he expected the aggrieved lawmakers to present their issues through various committees in parliament instead of putting on sack clothes way before President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
“This only tells us that the caliber of MPs we have in the august House do not understand their roles and responsibilities. It also tells us that most of the MPs in parliament do not have adequate education to read and understand their Standing Orders, which, unfortunately, do not allow them to dress in such attire while in the chamber,” he said.
Biblically, clothing in sack-cloth and rolling in ashes represented mourning over evils and falsities, it also represented humiliation, and likewise repentance; for the primary thing in humiliation is to acknowledge that of himself one is nothing but evil and falsity.
The same is true of repentance, which is effected solely through humiliation, and this through the confession of the heart that of himself one is of such a nature.