Don’t threaten us
I have said this once and I will not tire to say it again. If President Peter Mutharika thinks he can rule like some 17th Century king or queen without any criticism from us, the citizenly, then he can resign and go back to the classroom in US as a private citizen where Malawians will not give a damn or care a hoot what he is doing with his private life.
He can call the media disgusting as he did in Mchinji last week but as long as he uses our tax to live in opulence and spend days on end in America without telling Malawians what he was doing, we will not stop to question him with view to hold him accountable for the tax kwachas he was mercilessly blowing in the US.
For the record, this president is an utterly incompetent one. He is taking Malawi on a high way cruise to self destruction. Nothing is working at the moment. He cannot even lead and solve simple problems such as energy, water, food and agriculture.
We should forget about the economy because it is on its own and there is no attention given to it.
The private sector, the engine for growth is left unattended while choking it mercilessly with excruciating taxes so that the President expensive tastes such as riding in the latest models of expensive vehicles (I will deal with this one in detail the Bad Week segment) are funded without fail.
It does not matter whether it is in a year when 6.5 million Malawians risk starvation while others are dying in hospitals because they are no drugs or equipment to cure them of simple ailments.
Shockingly and, despite all incompetence, the President does not want to be criticized or asked what he was doing in the US when other presidents who care about their people dashed back home to work on their countries’ problems.
Because there was a vacuum in information, the President starts blaming Malawians for speculating that he was seriously sick when it was him and his incompetent communication team who were at fault.
And then there he was in Mchinji. Instead of campaigning and telling people of Mchinji West what his DPP candidate would do for them, he ranted and blamed Daily Times and ZBS accusing them of spreading lies that he had died in the US and that his grand children were asking him about it.
I do not remember Daily Times ever writing that the President had died. I could have heard of ZBS ever aired such a news story.
Yet the President called the two media outlets in the most uncivilized manner disgusting for spreading lies about his health. Where he got it, no one knows. Perhaps it is his incompetent team that told him so or some lying minister or official.
But this is not the issue.
Rather, the issue is that Mutharika feels so big that Malawians made him president. All he wants is praise from everyone and every media house even when he is an incompetent president who cocoons himself at the State House day in day out and has no plan, determination and the accompanying stamina to change this country for the better for all and not just his cronies.
The taxpayer-funded MBC which sings false praises for him all night and all day is not enough.
The larger picture is that the President does not want Malawians to hear and know the fuller truth of the bad job he is doing in the way he is governing this country.
But this will not happen. This is 21st Malawi and it is not a personal estate of someone to ruin it the way he wants and expect every Malawian to be heralded into submission to remain quiet.
Mutharika’s outbursts are meant to incite the bootlickers that surround him to make life difficult for his critics.
But we will not cower to these threats in full realization that this country belongs to all Malawians and none, even the President, has a right to threaten another.
More importantly, elected leaders, including the President are supposed to account for their actions.
So, Mr President, stop threatening us. We are also Malawians.
A vibrant writer who gives a great insight on hot topics and issues
