I refuse to be duped
Instead of addressing issues that are of concern to Malawians, President Peter Mutharika chose to engage in his favourite pastime of picking fights with the media on arrival from the United States on Monday.
I am deliberately avoiding describing his arrival as coming from United Nations General Assembly because that is merely the excuse which was being peddled.
The truth is; the president went to the US partly for a visit but also to check on old acquaintances.
This is so because after the UN meeting wrapped up, the president stayed on for the unexplained ten more days.
But I digress here. The issue at hand is about the president blaming the media that we do not write positive things about Malawi after he saw a documentary playing, featuring the role of TA Kachindamoto in ending child marriages in Dedza.
His view is that the media in Malawi concentrate on negatives and not such positives that Malawi should be known for.
To begin with, this just shows one thing and it is that the President does not pay attention to what happens in this country and only waits to travel to the US to see and hear success stories that have already been highlighted back home.
Mutharika did not need to travel to New York for him to see the documentary about TA Kachindamoto because the chief has featured extensively for that precise role in Malawi media.
As for the success stories about the fight against HIV/Aids, the media have been part and parcel of the battle against the pandemic since the first case was diagnosed in this country.
There have been projects, of which the media have been an integral part, that it is a first rate insult for the President to say we have not been part of the success story.
As for me, I refuse to be duped by a president who has clearly failed to take this country forward in anything.
The issue here is not about positive stories from Malawi and the media. The issue here is about a president who wants to be praised to the sky and to the moon and back, when there is absolutely nothing to sing his praises for.
Why should we write positive things about Malawi and this government when the majority of the population lives below the poverty line?
Where is the positive story when Malawians are dying in hospitals like Tsetse flies because there are no drugs as a result of a government that is clueless and utterly incompetent in managing the health delivery system?
What crimes have poor Malawians committed to be fed propaganda that there is something positive happening in this country when their children are still learning under a tree?
I have searched everywhere and I have not found positivity.
On the contrary, I have found a government that practices nepotism, tribalism, corruption and so many other forms of injustice that to write anything positive about it would be committing an atrocity against the people of Malawi.
There is one reason why the president wants the media to write about positives when there are none.
It is because he wants his privileged position and that of the elite connected to him protected from their Ivory Tower, while the rest of us are toiling to keep them there.
There are so many bone chilling things that happened in this country while he was away and Malawians expected him to address them.
His own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after noticing that things are failing apart in literary all aspects, has decided to unleash violence on everyone to hide those failures.
DPP operatives and thugs have been to Nsanje Lalanje where war is raging over who gets elected into Parliament in a by-election.
Because the DPP has no ideas on how to win it, the party thinks threats, intimidation and violence will make voters vote for its candidate on October 17.
In Rumphi, Tumbukas decided to celebrate their culture and invited all parties to spend the day with them.
The DPP functionaries thought they only are more Malawian to be invited and unleashed terror on Leader of Opposition Lazarus Chakwera to stop him from attending the function.
Home Affairs Minister Grace Chiumia engineered the arrest of innocent clerks registering people in this country, who were merely demanding their dues in Mzuzu.
Malawians who were waiting with bated breath to hear the president talk about these issues were disappointed that he said nothing on arrival.
The question that he failed to address is this: Has the DPP decided to unleash violence on innocent Malawians, with a view of intimidating them, to maintain it in power?
Any leader up to the mark would address these issues and would refrain from talking about the periphery.
At the end of the day, the sum total of our country is that we are on a wrong trajectory and this president is taking us nowhere.
The president wants to dupe us into believing that all is well and we should be happy when the reality on the ground is the opposite.
I refuse to be duped.
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