Malawi lacks visionary leadership
That the lives of Malawians are in steady decline is beyond debate.
Malawi has been ranked the third poorest country by a prestigious London-based publication, Business Insider, based on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
The publication, in a report released on June 1 2018, has ranked 28 countries in the countries which have their PPPs below $1,000.
And this owes to corruption, abuse of resources and identity politics.
In other words, Malawi lacks visionary leadership as Professor Ben Kalua of the University of Malawi has put it.
The country’s leaders in the multiparty dispensation have no vision to actualise for the country and its people. For example, when they ascend to positions of political influence, they fraudulently amass obscene wealth.
The leaders do this at the expense of the poor, whom they hoodwink into embracing their pseudo-visions such as Farm Input Subsidy Programme and many social cash transfer programmes thrown their way.
The country’s 24-year courtship with multiparty politics has brought Malawians to the edge of the abyss of cluelessness and nurturing executives who should otherwise be in the dock.
The country keeps holding on to ministers and executives who commit government to wasteful contracts even when the war on poverty is faltering.
And an embrace of President Peter Mutharika and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has proved to be an until-death marriage with the conjugal rewards of the extremes of hopeless economic stagnation, abject poverty and a dearth of a reasoned existence for the country.
The DPP’s unsurpassed mediocrity and short-sightedness has, for example, culminated in the crafting of the K1.5 trillion financial blueprint which is consumption-based.
Provision of subsidy in food security is generally based on a false premise.
No sane government subsidises consumption directly. If anything, governments subsidise commercial production to ensure subsidised consumption; hence, uplifting living standards of citizens.
Subsidising subsistence agriculture, which is for purposes of consumption only, is a futile exercise that, clearly, lacks sustainability, is a huge drain of government’s meagre resources and facilitates corruption.
This and many other cases validate that Malawian leaders have no vision for the country. No wonder, the country continues to wear the shameful tag of being among the poorest nations in the world.
A vibrant writer who gives a great insight on hot topics and issues