The Big-Mouthed: PAC members are servants of personal interests

On Tuesday this week, the Public Appointments Committee Committee (PAC) of the Parliament has shown to Malawians that corruption in the country can and should be regarded as a conventionally normal tradition, by rejecting the newly interviewed Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) appointee, Martha Chizuma.

For starters, since the time she was appointed to become the ombudsperson, Martha Chizuma has been one of the finest holders of that office Malawi has ever had. She has done her job professionally without any fears or favours to the point of becoming a household name. Chizuma has preached to the nation that it is possible for a pubic officer to do her job without necessarily bootlicking those who put him or her at that position and again without meddling in any sorts of maladministration due to top down pressures.

It is presumably against such a strong professional background that members of PAC; particularly those who scored her lowly feared that should she become the Director General of the graft busting entity, all officers who are hellbent towards accumulation of wealth through corrupt means, will recoil to their holes with their tails between legs.

Truth be told here without any paranoia, whether PAC just chose to frustrate Chizuma’s appointment in the interest of politics or personal pleasures or it was legally justified, the position of ACB’s director general needs courageous and brave men and women in the hat of  Madame Chizuma. Corruption levels in the country reached so high levels that it is now regarded as a new norm which; if one does not practise it, they are treated as familiar strangers. And yet it is a vice that has seen the country retarding for ages in terms sustainable developments

Apparently, because of the vice, the country’s development is still so stagnant that the only panacea is perhaps to evacuate all the current Malawians and replace them with a population from another planet where corruption doe not exist.

No wonder Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) is at pains with the direction PAC took and intends to mobilise all Malawians to walk to the streets and make a reasonable public noise; come May 18, so that the Parliamentary committee is made aware of the fact that aborigines are very bitter with the selfish decision it  took on that fateful Tuesday.

I have, time and again, said that Malawi is for all of us. If some few selfish individuals think that the nation and its resources belong to only them and no one else, they surely commit grave mistakes and unforgivable sins because one day they will certainly wake up and realise that whatever they accumulated corruptly is but vanity which they’d better share with the public for the sake of God’s love.

How would it feel if Malawi had robust health systems, finest education system, state of the art road networks and excellent agricultural structures benefitting all Malawians equally? But out of sheer selfishness, Mother Malawi is still where it was decades ago; when all her counterparts took off with sustainable developments and visions, all because of few corrupt individuals.

 AMalawi tidzitolere koma !

Richard Kayenda

I hold a bachelor’s degree in languages obtained from Mzuzu University. Since 2016, I have been working for Maravi Post as a reporter of local news; particularly from the Northern Region of Malawi. My main news areas are politics, business, sports and many more. Besides reporting, I also write news analyses on current affairs just to share informed opinions on news that matter in Malawi. By now I have a five year practical experience in online news reporting and I look forward to growing more professionally while raising the bar of Maravi Post; in order to make it a household name, as we keep our readership informed, edutained and updated on a daily basis.