Violence has no place in democracy
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government and its faithful will never cease to amaze the public with their political brutality.
In the not-too-distant inglorious past, a much-aspersed DPP regime not only cobbled together legislation meant to take us back to the Stone Age but paraded panga-wielding thugs in the streets of Blantyre just to intimidate the citizenry when the sense of disillusionment with Bingu wa Mutharika’s leadership was pervasive in the country.
Today, they are colliding with Alliance for Democracy (Aford) followers simply because the DPP, as erroneously implied by Rumphi North Constituency Member of Parliament who is also Minister of Transport and Public Works Jappie Mhango, thinks that Aford had encroached on their territory.
And this clear sign that DPP leadership – and those before it – has resisted demand from the governed to unreservedly embrace enhanced political ideologies aimed at improved democratic and developmental outcomes.
But Malawi does not belong to DPP.
So, while it is apparent that Malawi is the most abused country by all sorts of rogues, on a positive note, DPP authorities and their rascals need to know that the country is in a multiparty democracy and it entails that every citizen must enjoy basic freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution regardless of party colour.
It is also true, as the saying goes, that leaders who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Most individuals do not need sophisticated measurement tools to tell the difference between good leaders and bad leaders. They feel the difference. They have experienced the effects at a very personal level. In general, good leaders are more effective than bad leaders in almost every dimension.
One would not expect that, with all cases of leaders who tumbled because they exercised brutality in their leadership, the current DPP leadership would freely be treading the same path by displaying total mischievousness in its operations.
But brutality, intimidation and violence are public enemies in a democracy that must be zealously loathed, hated and reviled; there are a grouchy weed needing total weeding out or complete obliteration from earthly existence to borrow from the common parlance of advertisers of pest busters.
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