FROM ONJEZANI KENANI’s WALL:
A friend thinks aloud:Hi Onjezani,
Remember when Mrs Joyce Banda was president of the Republic and Malawians complained that the country was being run by the West?
Among others, she had Tony Blair and his team advising her how to run the affairs of government. That Tony Blair – the former UK prime minister who, after leaving 10 Downing Street, established an institute that now goes around advising African governments how to run their countries. They do this by establishing results delivery units within each country’s highest office.
During Joyce Banda’s doomed two years, Tony and his team established one such Delivery Unit within State House and the Office of the President and Cabinet. A year later, cashgate happened. All hell broke loose. Stuff hit the ceiling. Keen to maintain his image, Tony and his team dumped JB, fled Malawi and distanced themselves from the cashgate scandal. They knew nothing about it, they didn’t enable it, they said. Yet nobody really knows how much they knew (or didn’t know) about the scandal. Some of their closest government collaborators were later arrested.
Now Tony and his team are coming back to Malawi to work with the government of Chakwera and Chilima.
According to their website: “The Blair Institute is looking to set up a new project to support the Government of Malawi to strengthen its delivery and implementation mechanisms. This is likely to include a delivery function in State House, but also potentially support other parts of the Presidency e.g. communications, international affairs.
The Project will seek to strengthen connections with other key ministries and agencies, both in the centre (the Vice President’s Office and the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Planning) as well as key sector Ministries, such as the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Malawi Investment and Trade Centre and the Ministries covering infrastructure. Our Malawi team may extend to include advisors in these or other Ministries, depending on the sectoral priorities of the Presidency.”
I have several questions: Why did Tony and his team leave in the first instance? What role did they play in cashgate? How much did they know?
Given the plethora of advisors the president has surrounded himself with, what can a bunch of foreign advisors who know little to nothing about Malawi offer the president and the country?
Isn’t it the President and Vice President’s job to “deliver” results for Malawians?
Isn’t that what they promised?
What is the role of the civil service if results delivery is outsourced to an external group of foreign advisors?
Is this part of the mindset change that the veep has been evangelizing to us all? And finally, what does Joyce Banda think of this comeback?
very shameful indeed. all those rants…all those deadly demos…all those threats thrown at the judiciary to twist the constitution to deny the legitimate winner his victory and democracy to be undermined in broad day light. is this what the duel wanted, taking us back to colonialism? tikamati apm ndi mtondo don’t think we are joking. matama onse aja kutokota heavy ” mwachepa kwambiri, ndinukamwana kakang’ono” and yet they are failing to use their brains and all they can manage is the hiring of the west to remote control them. i can now see who influenced that reknowned uk institute to award the concourt judges. that could be done to make blair win favours from us.