Political Scientists in Malawi have said Malawi Congress Party’s response to State of Address through Leader of Opposition Simplex Chithyola Banda lacks honesty to most of the issues mentioned in his response in Parliament.
On Wed nesday, Chithyola Banda, as the Leader of Opposition gave response in parliament to the State of Address delivered by President Arthur Peter Mutharika on Friday last week.
Chithyola criticized some steps being undertaken by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration to address the country’s challenges which were becoming worse during MCP leadership.In his response on procurement of maize by government, Chithyola said Malawians are puzzled that government has decided to procure expensive maize from Zambia whilst locally many mega farmers still have maize stock that can satisfy government demand at cost of less than MWK80,000 per 50Kg bag.
In his comment to what Chithyola said, Political Scientist Wonderful Mkuche said there was no honesty to what the leader of opposition said yesterday in his response because the same approach to deal with food insecurity, was the one that MCP government tried to do just few months ago before they lost elections.
“It is very shameful that the opposition has forgotten what they did few months ago trying to response to address hunger. I hope they are just opposing for the sake of opposing”, said Mkuche.
On Public Service and Appointments, the Leader of Opposition pointed out that appointments appear to favor those with close regional or tribal ties, saying if unchecked, these risk entrenching nepotism and tribalism.
“Mr. Speaker Sir, we call upon the government to ensure all appointments are based strictly on merit, performance, and competence—not on regional, tribal, or political considerations”, reads the statement.While agreeing with Chithyola that when making appointment there is need to do so based on merit, performance and competence.
Mkuche also referred back during to what was happening during MCP regime. “MCP was appointing people not based on merit or performance but because of region or even party affiliation.
This is why they easily collapsed”, he said.The Political Scientist added that MCP was given the very same opportunity but they did not use merit when appointing individuals.Mkuche did not stop there but was surprised to hear that MCP through Leader of Opposition is deeply concerned by reports of mass arrests and denial of bail, describing it as underming justice and equality. In his statement, Chithyola reminded the house that, during MCP time, a man was killed in Ndirande and another one was also killed in Phalombe but there were no arrests.
“If a man was killed in Ndirande and government chose not to arrest anyone that does not mean that each and every government should act according to how they acted. It was their choice not to take action on such cases.
In terms of 16 suspects that have been arrested, as MCP they could have done something better to gain public trust and confidence, but they pretended as if they did not know the suspects”, he added.Lastly, Mkuche commended DPP government for having the knowledge of who were involved in panga attacks and arrest the suspect on pre-elections violence so that Malawi should not experience the same in future.
