Like Pope Francis, President Banda does not play by the book. She says her mind and damn the consequences.
This other day Abiti sent her legal advisors scurrying around for holes in which to hide when she turned the whole legal maxim of ‘ignorance is no defence’ on its head by saying those who benefit from proceeds of theft are not guilty of anything.
The guilty, she said, are the actual thieves and only them should be sent to the cleaners, not the beneficiaries of their thievery.
And, in trying to absolve her boys and girls of the cashgate imbroglio last Friday, she said her cabinet comprises people who cannot even type their names on a computer keyboard to manipulate such a complicated machine like Ifmis.
To my dear president, it is the junior boys and girls who ‘played monopoly with real cash’ with the Ifmis.
My! God save us! So we are lorded over by men and women who are literally illiterate? How safe are we?
I have some news for Abiti, cabinet ministers are supposed to be political heads in ministries and government departments. They have to be aware of policies of the administration they are serving and be able to guide technocrats in the ministries or departments of the same.
If what Abiti said were true then we could as well do away with ministers. Why should we pay millions to zombies who are not aware of what their technocrats are up to?
Cabinet ministers cannot plead ‘ignorance’ from the cashgate affair and hope to get away with it. If they were not aware of what was going on in their ministries because they were incompetent – as Ama is trying to tell us – then they were not supposed to be there in the first place.
Need I say more? They all have to fall on their swords. Ignorance, forget what Ama is trying to inculcate in us, is no defence.
