On Clerk of Parliament

Let Matilda Katopola stay
By Hastings Maloya

For the third year running we have not had our national budget on time, a situation that has put all of us in a predicament since we all rely on the budget for guidance in whatever we are engaged in. What has been difficult to understand is why a country thus 44 years old but still very poor should choose to prioritise politics and not development. Why do we still have members of parliament that do not see the importance of the budget to the nation? If indeed it is politics, then the politics in Malawi is not exciting at all.
All along we were told that the opposition is refusing the budget until their demands for the implementation of Section 65 are met. We have heard about Section 65 so long now that it’s no longer an exhilarating issue for discussion. And when parliament met this time round, we were still expecting that the section will be mentioned so we were only waiting for the way forward.
Then came an issue of a memorandum of understanding. The opposition parties threatened to reject the 2008/09 national budget if President Bingu wa Mutharika's government does not sign a so-called memorandum of understanding (MOU) put forward by the country's clergy as a way forward to narrow the political gap existing in parliament between the two sides.
But things came to a shocking change when the opposition found another reason to make government dance for the budget to pass.

The opposition members of parliament demanded that the Clerk of Parliament Matilda Katopola be sacked before the budget was discussed and passed. The opposition political leaders pilled pressure on government to adopt a resolution to remove the clerk of parliament following reports that Katopola, Malawi’s first female Clerk of Parliament, dubiously awarded a contract to her company Monics Trends to supply printing services to parliament.

Some opposition members of parliament were quote in the press saying that they would be surprised if government allows the clerk to continue working. Their argument was that this would give an interpretation that the authorities (i.e. government) are promoting corruption and bribery. What a lousy argument.

Meanwhile, government has declared that it would not implement the parliament's decision and I say well done government. And please do not remove her. Let her stay at parliament.

The demands by the opposing parliamentarians are irresponsible and out of context putting in mind that the issue of Katopola was discussed, an investigation completed and results made public. The country’s President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika acknowledged and forgave her. This does not mean that she was not wrong and naturally she must have regretted her wrong doing and one wonders why forgiving someone has now become a sin.
The resistance by government on this immature demand is commendable because it is obvious that the said Clerk of Parliament's financial impropriety was just a scapegoat by the opposition. The real reason for her woes, could be - as we have now learned - her refusal to allow MPs have unsorted loans and her demands that MPs travel economy class and not business class on international assignments. She is on the wrong side because of her prudent financial management at parliament. We even once heard that some ‘honourable’ members were threatening to beat her up. How silly!
In any case, if indeed the issue is that Katopola is in the wrong, why is her wrong doing attached to the national budget? What is the relationship? Why should people suffer in hospitals for lack of medicines or civil servants struggling to receive their salaries simply because some misguided members of parliament are demanding the firing of a single individual? And which government department would be willing to welcome such an individual in a situation that she is being removed?
We have also learnt from reliable and knowledgeable sources that the matter of hiring, firing or disciplining the clerk of parliament belongs to the executive arm of the government and not the legislature. One therefore wonders why or parliamentarians get excited with issues. As it has already been observed elsewhere, if indeed the disgruntled MPs were not happy with the President’s decision to forgive and reinstate Katopola, the proper thing for the parliamentarians to do was to go to court and to seek a judicial review and challenge the decision. But that they wasted our time voting and tying Katopola’s removal to the national budget, is the last thing a compassionate Malawian would appreciate.
And for argument sake, who among our opposition MPs is clean of theft, bribery and corruption? I can challenge the Mps that if we were to take to task each and every one of them, we will discover a lot of anomalies in the way they have handled financial matters but they have the audacity to corner one Matilda Katopola.
Just an example, I wish our members of parliament could account for the treadle pumps they received to where they went, who is using them and how much they have contributed to crop harvest in their respective constituencies. It will be interesting to realise that some of them might have sold some of them and cannot even tell what the proceedings were used for. How many of our MPs can account for the allocated constituency funds?
I wish our parliamentarians could be aware of how many youths and women in their constituencies that do not have any source of employment and what they are doing about it. I wish they could show us initiatives that they are putting in place to help their people both economically and socially.
We are supposed to be proud that we are probably the only country in the region with a female clerk of parliament. Katopola is young and she has already proven that she is brave and intelligent. It has proven that Dr Mutharika’s choice was marvellous. She needs our support and guidance. We must accept that as an individual she can make mistakes and all we need to do is to correct her and correct her only when our sense of correction is in good faith and not out of sheer jealousy and ill will as we have noted in this recent occurrence.
Kotopola, just as the Attorney General Jane Ansah and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Esther Cheka Chilenje, just to mention a few are models among our young girls. She has inspired many and it would be a bad decision to remove her from parliament. I urge the government not to bow down to these crazy demands for the sake of our country.
MPs are only voted into power. They do not go through any meaningful interviews and most of them will not win the next election so should they put our deserved women in situations thus not conducive? Thus far from nation building.
Katopola must not be removed from parliament. She has brought discipline and she needs more time to bring even more changes. More-over the people, who are making the wild demands, are only doing it because Katopola is a woman. A real man is not praised for torturing women but giving them love and guidance. Our opposition parliamentarians, mostly men, have miserably failed on this one. They have only managed to put our country to shame
Here are members of parliament who have miserably failed to bring any meaningful development in their areas and failed to support the current government to help their people and are here loud-mouthed for the removal of a clerk of parliament and indeed shamelessly tying that demand to the national budget. And these people will only be in parliament for the next eight months and they want to leave parliament in shambles. We can’t accept that.
Let Matilda Katopola stay.

*Hastings Maloya works for the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust but is writing in his personal capacity