Let us face it; the so-called Malawi democracy has no semblance of democracy at all. In truth, democracy remains a travesty in this land of the Shire River.
Come to think of it, people who claim to have fought for democracy in this country maintain a foothold on political parties they founded.
To them, they and only they are capable of running party affairs— with the rest serving as party followers. It is either you tow their line of thought or you leave their ‘limited liability company’; sorry, I mean ‘political party’.
I would equate such political leaders to the people we learn of in 2 Timothy 3: 5; I am talking about people who are renowned for “having a form of godliness but denying its power”.
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There you go. It does not make sense, at least to me, for someone to be claiming to have democratic credentials when their actions ‘preach’ a different story; the story of autocrats.
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I mean, why should political party leaders fool all of us through claims that they have the aspirations of the people at heart when, in fact, all they think about is themselves? I mean, in line with the new Political Parties’ Act, party leaders have to get signatures from the length and breadth of the country before they can register their political parties at the Registrar of Political Parties.
And, from what I know, political parties that have been registered in the country were registered after presenting signatures of people from all districts of the country to that office.
That act legitimises the political parties as national parties. By extension, and implication, this means each and every Malawian who meets the criteria of the political parties can vie for any position, including that of president, at the parties’ elective conventions.
However, incumbent party leaders or their bootlickers do their best to keep formidable contestants out of the political parties’ doors. They try their best to frustrate other people because, if the truth were to be told, they [founders of political parties] regard the parties as their limited liability companies.
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As such, they do everything in their power to keep the party within their reach so that they can be manipulating whoever is in charge.
And what better way to do so than ensuring that only sycophants are in control. And, then, we expect leaders of such political parties to represent national interests when they take the joystick of power.
My foot! They will, surely, just make things worse; such leaders. In fact, they will make things worse for others while living the best lives for themselves.
When such people get into power, they will be eating rice and chicken for lunch in Malawi and, on the same day, have dinner in Botswana because they want to squander taxpayers’ money as quickly as possible and as heedlessly as possible. Meanwhile, the poor will be dying of hunger.
In the meantime, men will be committing suicide because they cannot take it anymore as the mental health system has been neglected because the leaders themselves live outside the reality of our times.
Maybe this is the curse of democracy. I mean, in autocratic regimes, there is no hypocrisy.
There is no hypocrisy because leaders do not pretend to be democrats; they live lives of potentates and injure and kill at will—as if they own the world and lives of all those who live in it.
Not with leaders who pretend to be democrats; they will lie and lie, injure and kill—all behind people’s backs because they begin to live the lie that they are democrats.
