On Presidential trips

Lets be fair with our criticism

For employees, be it in the public or private sector, there is nothing motivating than being offered a foreign trip. Whether business or academic but when such an opportunity occurs, it is joy in homes, joy at office and its good news worth sharing to all that matter. There could be other officials that are on the plane time and again but traditionally they always get excited with their next flight.

Such trips occur for different reasons depending on the institution that one works for. Other trips are work related that one does not have a choice but to travel. Others are purely a life time opportunity. For those working in the private sector, for example doing business, foreign trips are part of the investment and require capital to carry them. But much as a lot of money has to go into such trips, the traveler still gets excited to be at the airport two hours before departure time.

The other groups of people that travel quite often are those working in the NGO sector. Mostly their natures of jobs require them to travel to different countries for seminars, workshops, work-related activities or educational tours. There are some heads of NGOs that do have a year’s schedule of travel itinerary in there diaries. Much as goals and objectives of their organisations are to save the local masses, none of their constituents are consulted about such trips. We have eventually seen heads of non-governmental organisations becoming overnight millionaires – one would suspect such to be outcomes of continuous foreign trips. We could be wrong!

Then there is the office of the President. By nature of this challenging office and without getting into unnecessary debates, the holder is obliged to travel quite a lot especially that we are now living in a global village. Whether it means wooing investors, discussing peace, soliciting donor money or promotion of tourism and other policies, it requires the President to travel to different for him to positively sale his country. In cases like these, the president has to travel with different personalities that would do different activities during such tours or visits.

There has been Malawians that have had a chance to travel following their inclusion on a presidential entourage. This has been a trend ever since we gained independence. It has been a powerful tool of education, networking and sharing of information. Of late what we have learnt is that the current president has been reducing the number of people accompanying him on such trips. Much as there could be convincing reasons but reducing the presidential entourage is not necessarily good for the nation as this denies other Malawians an opportunity to travel.

Well, thus subject for a different discussion. But the discussion here is how and why should the NGO community criticise the president for travelling and never look at their own travel programmes? The media reports, if they are anything to go by, leave a lot to be desired. The allegations and fears are that the presidential trips might be drawing on the country’s dwindled reserves due to scarcity of forex.

The criticism allegedly came from an organisation designated as the coordinating body for all non-governmental organisations in Malawi with the goal of ensuring effective coordination and collaboration of all the NGOs and other development partners including government. One would wonder why such a criticism should come through newspapers. What happened to coordination and collaboration?

Interestingly, on the list of provided trips that the president has had lately, the critics have not pointed out which among them was a useless trip and a forex drainer. They also did not indicate how much might have been lost. Simply they made an allegation without facts. The body also does not give examples of foreign trips whose officials might have turned down in the interest of the country’s forex.
The problem with such awkward criticisms is that they bring political talk where there is supposed to be no politics. They bring unnecessary debates that leave people pointing at each other in support or against. Malawi does not need this. Not at this point.

Possibly the president has of late been travelling in his capacity as both the President of the Republic of Malawi and as Chairperson of the African Union. These two especially the later, brings with it challenges that as a country we can not avoid. As was observed by the government of the United States soon after the president’s election to the position of Chairperson for the African Union, there is a huge task that the president is involved in and Malawi as a nation will contribute.

The United States said, in a statement, that it looks forward to continuing our partnership with the AU to promote peace, prosperity, and security for all Africans. “We share Chairperson Mutharika’s goals of ending child hunger and malnutrition and welcome his interest in promoting the critical goal of agricultural development and food security on the continent. The U.S. stands ready to partner with the AU on promoting democracy and good governance and to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections on the continent in the coming year”.

Surely one would not expect the President to achieve this from the four walls of his office at the State House.
It surprises me that organisations be it public or private are not good at releasing statement in recognition of achievements but rather jump to make criticisms. Maybe I need a school of thought but there are strides that Malawi has achieved that require mention positively. We may not acknowledge but others do.

On Tuesday, 17 August 2010, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) wrote on their website and I quote, “Since 2007 the country has made real progress in achieving economic growth as part of programmes instituted by the government of President Mutharika in 2005. Healthcare, education and environmental conditions have improved, and Malawi has started to move away from reliance on overseas aid. The government's programme of fertilizer subsidies has dramatically boosted output in recent years, making Malawi a net food exporter.”

Much as we may be free to criticize the President, rightly or wrongly, and make wild accusations, most of which are not substantiated, it would be good to demonstrate what we are doing better to turn around situations that we are in as a country. For example, while CONGOMA’s chairperson sees everything wrong in the President’s foreign trips as is alleged, which could be right, he should have also showed the nation what his organization has done so far to bring the much-needed forex into the country. It is also imperative to give examples of foreign trips that he turned down for the love of the country - it is called a fair game.