[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HIRTY two Malawian academics and professionals abroad have taken on their government over the issue of corruption and bad leadership in their country.
The university lecturers, economists, financial and trade experts in South Africa, The Gambia, Europe and North America in a recent statement expressed ‘great concern’ over the ‘growing leadership crisis in Malawi and the worsening socio-economic conditions which have made life unbearable for ordinary Malawians’.
‘We are disappointed that the promise of a new dawn represented by the decisions of the High Court, sitting as the Constitutional Court, and the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, which nullified the 2019 presidential election and ordered a fresh presidential election, remains unfulfilled,’ the statement said.
The academics and professionals noted that when the government of President Lazarus Chakwera came to power two years ago, it discovered ‘mindboggling levels of looting and corruption committed under the previous government’.
The statement said that Malawians expected the new government to investigate and prosecute those who were involved in ‘state looting and corruption’.
But two years on, ‘corruption and looting are getting worse,’ the academics and professionals said.
‘We are alarmed at the regularity with which revelations about new corruption and looting scandals are being made.
‘These scandals have implicated those at the very top of the government, businesspeople, civil servants, police, and military officials.
‘In response, the government has, at best, exhibited an indifferent attitude and, at worst, behaved in a manner that suggests a cover-up or an intention to obstruct the course of justice,’ the statement added.
The academics and professionals said that the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had been ‘weakened and isolated’.
‘At the centre of this depressing state of affairs is the absence of political leadership,’ the statement said.
‘Within government, there appears to be no political will to address once and for all the growing socio-economic and other problems the country faces.
‘On its part, the opposition is fragmented and lacks the legitimacy and credibility to serve as a rallying point for change.’
The academics and professionals added: ‘For the ordinary person, there is no hope.
‘Malawi faces an existential crisis as a country, a crisis which is human-made, and is therefore humanly resolvable.
‘The erosion of faith in the ability or willingness of the government and political leaders to address the country’s mounting socio-economic crisis does not augur well for the future of politics in our country,’ they said.
The government did not take kindly to this intervention by Malawians abroad.
Its spokesman, Gospel Kazako, instead blamed Malawian institutions of higher learning for producing the wrong quality of human resources that were of no use to the country.
One of the academics based in the US told Africa Briefing: ‘The government spokesperson blames the corruption on the institutions of higher learning that produced the crooks who are looting the country.
‘It is totally lost on him that he and both the president and vice president, for the first time in Malawi’s history, are products of the same institution of higher learning he is blaming.
‘Or is that his backhanded way of admitting that they are indeed participants in the corruption?’
However, the current government in Malawi is taking credit for chasing a Malawi-born British businessman who is battling against alleged corruption in Malawi in a court in London.
Last October, Britain’s anti-corruption authorities, in conjunction with the ACB, arrested Zuneth Sattar, along with several associates in the UK and Malawi, in a joint operation that led to several homes and offices being raided in both countries.
In May, a court in West London refused to vary the conditions of Sattar’s police bail that stops him from travelling outside the UK.
Sattar’s lawyers argue that their client is innocent.
