Get a life, Mr Moses Dossi
I only have one ask from former Sports Minister in the Bakili Muluzi administration, Moses Dossi, and it is that he must get a life and move on.
In his wisdom, Dossi has written Vice President Saulos Chilima, in his capacity as chairperson of Public Service Reforms Commission, to consider putting ex-Cabinet ministers and MPs on pension scheme.
I am happy that so far the Vice President has not dignified Dossi’s letter with a response because it does not deserve one.
Dossi’s naivety and audacity to imagine that what he is suggesting is something that should come near anything in the name of reform is actually staggering.
Putting ex-ministers and MPs on pension would run counter to the very reforms that Chilima is championing in public sector management as the resultant bill is something that this country can simply not afford.
When people such as Dossi think that government is Father Christmas who must dole out goodies to run their lives, I wonder whether they live in Malawi or somewhere above us in the ozones.
Any average Malawian should know that government is dead broke and it is having to ration funding to ministries and departments. The result, which all of us can see, is that key operations such as police and hospitals have ground to halt.
The economy has tanked that the private sector, the so called economic engine of growth, is struggling. The kwacha is galloping to the north that raw material import bills have all of a sudden skyrocketed.
Let me not even talk about the effects on the common man. It is simply trouble.
The long and short of it is that 51 years after independence we are still struggling as a nation when others around us are moving forward. We have not made a dent on our poverty and our country is virtually last on any development statistics that anybody can release.
Dossi’s main thrust of argument is that ex-ministers and MPs must be rewarded because they contributed to the country’s development.
But the simple question he must answer is which development is he talking about because the last time I checked this nation is actually the poorest in the world and doing badly on virtually every development indices.
It is still poor that it cannot even balance its budget and the politicians that Dossi wants this country to reward with lifetime financial security have been largely responsible for the mess.
They have taken more from the country than they have given it. Some have enriched themselves by grabbing the little that we all contributed to the national kitty in the name of tax for themselves or their families.
They have failed to produce the kind of leadership that we see in other nations that clearly brought those countries to prosperity.
There are many such leaders in the world and one of which is Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew who died in March at 91 after ruling for 31 years.
He transformed Singapore from a small port city into a wealthy global centre and prosperity.
Such leaders can demand anything from their countries and they would be given freely.
The funny part is that such leaders do not ask anything from their countrymen but instead give more to their nations.
It is people such as Dossi that think this country owes them a living that ask more because they were appointed ministers at some point in our lives when they made no difference at all.
This country needs redemption and healing first from robust leadership before anyone can ask anything from it. I have not seen such leadership. All I have seen is mediocrity and the result is the poverty around us.
Dossi and others who think like him should get a life.
The earlier they did this, the better.
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