Africa-Press – Malawi. Every time the president of this country rises to the podium to deliver a State of the Nation Address (Sona) in Parliament, we raise our ears in anticipation.
There are usually mixed reactions to these addresses: those who eat because their favourite politician is in power always clap their hands to whatever is said by the big man.
Others who have their big man in opposition at that particular moment in time always find something negative to say about the speech. And the few who only have the plight of this nation at heart watch, mouths agape, at how the circus continues.
Whoever lied to our politicians that politics is all about speeches and promises did us dirty. It seems that since we took over the realms of power from the British colonialists, we are stuck in a certain rut of retrogression due to habit. We have a love of saying more than we can do and dreaming of more than we can realise with the efforts that we make.
When it comes to formulating policy documents and drafting powerful speeches, very few out there can outdo a Malawian politician backed by his or her technocrats in public service. But when it comes to action and commitment to a course, a Malawian leader will always lag behind.
One may ask: what is wrong with us? What is wrong is exactly what President Lazarus Chakwera identified as our biggest problem in his speech when he addressed the nation in Parliament – lack of seriousness.
It was amazing to hear those words from our President who has been accused of the same. When you look at all the fails that people tag to the Tonse Alliance administration, you will realise that they border on lack of seriousness.
This is an administration that is failing to fight corruption and end it. They have failed to ensure there is food security. And most ignobly, they have failed to implement public sector reforms that would have been central to tangible transformation.
And yet this is an administration that is well-aware that we lack seriousness. In his Sona, President Chakwera sweated – his hands beating drums of hope whose noise was not convincing to Malawians who know better.
The title of his speech, ‘Taking Stock and Advantage of Our Progress in Achieving Economic Recovery and Resilience’, left us with more questions than the hope that it was intended to inspire. Obviously, the first question in those who understand the true state of this nation was; what progress?
How can somebody claim that Malawi has made any form of socio-economic progress in the years that the Tonse Alliance has been at the helm? This is perhaps the period that we have suffered more than we imagined we would.
The argument is not that the previous administration did a good job, but rather that we expected this administration to do better. What the President said in his address is not new to us. We know our problems and we know the solutions to them. What we lack is astute leadership that is more action oriented than dream cantered.
We have endured leaders with grand visions and hallucinations, and that no longer excites us. We have been told to dream in colour before, but now we want to live that dream.
President Chakwera’s talk of achieving wealth creation through agriculture, tourism and mining is seductive to a virgin, but not to a Malawian. As we speak, Malawians are anticipating to die from hunger as the government beats the drums of mega farms.
We should not be talking about profiting from tourism when we do not even have an airport. We need to be doing and not just talking. At the end of the day, what the Sona told us is that we are still where we have always been. We have a leadership that promises more than it delivers, and that has been our illness for decades.
As citizens of this country, we expect a government that is serious, and not one that talks about lack of seriousness. If the Chakwera administration is serious enough, then they must understand that our biggest enemy is corruption.
If this country is to make any meaningful progress, they must fight corruption in all its forms and end it. But if you have followed recent events in the news, your guess is as good as mine.
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