So the shameless Mutharika has the courage to call for the resignation for the man who is working hard to clear the mess he left behind?
Calling President Lazarus Chakwera to step down has become the anthem for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) such that it was not strange to hear such a tired line during his media briefing at his PAGE House in Mangochi today. A few months ago, the party gurus gathered at Crown Hotel in Lilongwe where they called for referendum claiming that this country would be better off in their hands than under President Chakwera.
Like they did at Crown Hotel they took turn castigating and calling for President Chakwera to resign. Leading the call was the former President who is also the DPP president. Mutharika who presided a failed system for six years which almost left this country in ruins had the courage to call for the resignation of his successor due to what we described as failure by President Chakwera to manage the economy.
This is strange coming from someone who is touted to be a scholar of repute and is well versed with International Affairs and economics. It is very strange that the former President could not be honest enough to the people he claimed to love to the extent of lying to them that the rising prices of commodities are solely because of President Chakwera.
If the former President meant well for Malawians he should have been the one to resign on 3rd February following the nullification of his presidency by the Constitutional Court but he stayed despite the growing calls for him to step aside and he had to wait for Malawians to boot him out of power through the ballot.
If Peter Mutharika was any better Malawians would not have booted him out. If his economic policies were good as he wants Malawians to believe his government could not have falsified fiscal figures to the International Monetary (IMF) in the first place.
The world plunged into global economic turmoil `because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the war came when the world was already reeling from the Covid-19. I expected Mutharika to be the first to tell Malawians the truth in these issues instead of painting a picture as if Malaw is an island free from the turmoil happening across the globe.
Already, some countries have crumbled as they could no longer withstand the prevailing economic crisis. The Sri Lankan government collapsed a few weeks ago due to the same global economic crisis. As of this week the country has no fuel reserve to sustain it business. Their fuel reserve dried up last month and they are only expected it to be replenish later this month, a development that has led to the government to be dysfunctional.
Last week President Nana Kuffour Addo of Ghana urged the International Community to help his county’s ailing economy which is on the verge of collapse. Now, Ghana is one of the countries in Africa touted to have a health GDP compared to most countries including Malawi. It is a country able to generate enough forex through the exportation of coffee but even coffee exports cannot save the country from the whirlwind wrecking world economies.
The Federal Reserve of United States is on record that the world could slide into global recession due to the ongoing war in in Ukraine which has affected the supply chain in the world and the distributions of some important commodities such as fuel which has given rise to the unprecedented inflation in the world.
As we are writing this the United states and Britain, the two countries regarded as the economic tigers of world, are failing to control the rising inflation. I have laboured bringing other countries into the picture in order to dispel the notion advanced by Mutharika that the economic woes we are facing are Chakwera’s making. Every corner of the world is suffering from the devastating impact of the Ukraine war and the prolonged Covid-19. But in our case, we can draw positives from the efforts President Chakwera has done to insulate the country from the shocks of those two forces.
The truth is that the situation in Malawi is not as dire as it is in other countries to call for President Chakwera to resign. Granted that we change government today does Mutharika have the magic wand to make a turnaround for this country’s fortune?
But again, this is hardly surprising coming from a man nursing wounds President Chakwera inflicted on him during the 2020 polls. Mutharika is a bitter man and even the passage of time has not helped him to recover from the trauma he suffered in that election such that we cannot expect him to see the remarkable strides President Chakwera has registered in the short time he has been in charge of a country which was left on a death bed in 2020.