This article was first published on Politics Uncensored a column in Nation on Sunday under the headline ‘Peter, wow!’ It has been republished with minor changes.
There is a saying in these parts of the world that often ring true in many ways than one. Here in Africa, we don’t make noise while eating.
Well, for one, it’s the saying that excuses those benefiting from corrupt regimes from pointing any fingers at the corruption. It’s the maxim for sycophants and handicappers, as well as unscrupulous businessmen and public officials preying on the state. It’s the motto for party zealots benefiting from cronyism. Tribalists practicing their cannibalism on state resources.
Its how a few men ever speak out on principle, but only do so when they have nothing else to lose. Or have everything to gain from expressing rage against status quo?
So you would understand why Lazarus Chakwera has been fuming around town, declaring May 21 elections to be fraudulent. Or why Saulos Chilima is also doing the same. Both men have missed out on the jackpot—that office with such enormous power and benefits.
But, for goodness sake, what was President Peter Mutharika’s business joining the bandwagon discrediting the same polls which declared him victor?
Did you hear him this week? While Chakwera and Chilima are scrambling lawyers to courts and supporters to the streets, authoring pointed letters to the public and listening world; making their case to convince all and sundry that the elections were indeed fraudulent, hence should be scrapped off, who on earth could’ve imagined that the winner, too, would give them a hand in building such a case?
I’m a layman on matters of law and Mutharika is a well-read professor of letters in this very trade, but hearing our fifth president this week claim that the opposition should be investigated for playing the ‘tippex game’ on his vote in parts of central region, was puzzling.
It’s a bizarre declaration which raises a whole specter of questions over the credibility of the elections, and in extension, ostensibly, his own legitimacy.
In the end, Justice Jane Ansah is now the lone voice when it comes to the notion that the vote is beyond question. All the three major candidates now say the vote was somehow tippexed and in court of public opinion, it’s a difficult sale to insist otherwise. And one is forced to remember Aesop fable about the Boy who cried wolf.
The story is about a bored Boy tired of tending Sheep. He cried “Wolf!” to get attention. He did it again and people came. A third time and the Boy was ignored. The moral of Aesop’s story is that a liar will not be believed, even when telling the truth but at the end of that story, indeed, there was a wolf that devoured the Sheppard Boy. Now think about it, we all have taken the words of the opposition with a pinch of salt.
Regular readers of this blog will recall that my first piece on the elections actually welcomed the Mutharika second term (READ: MUTHARIKA: The Second Coming) and dedicated little space to the rigging allegations.
Like the Sheppard boy, the opposition have a historic problem convincing us that their rigging claims are any different from the previous cases which have made it a norm in Africa, and to some extent this country, that losers always cry foul regardless of how credible the polling was.
But now all the evidence of the said rigging is being thrown to our faces, Tippex refuses to go away, MEC’s conduct is raising many questions and now we have a president, and election winner, who claim the elections were rigged too.
Maybe, there is a wolf. Maybe not.
That brings us to the letter which Chilima purportedly authored addressing concerns about Ansah’s conduct.
Prior to the leaking of the letter (by whoever it was), Chilima had threatened to release contents of the paper upon expiry of the five-day ultimatum for Ansah to leave the stage. The accusations in the letter remain subject for the courts and we are unfortunate enough to engage on the letter without the benefit of any of the said evidence Chilima posses, but that withstanding, isn’t Mutharika’s fresh comment about the elections being rigged not making Ansah’s position untenable.
While the allegations against Ansah are serious, I am not by any stretch suggesting she is guilty of them. But Ansah comes from a Supreme Court with a strong tradition of impartiality, where judges recuse themselves at slight accusations of bias. Isn’t it fair that Ansah step aside to allow credible investigations into the election management she presided over? If for anything, there is a maxim championed by the very same judiciary: Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done?
And in this internet age, wasn’t it naivety of the highest order, for lack of a better word, for the Supreme Court judge to allow herself being pictured, smiling, with the ruling party cadets in the immediate aftermath of the elections? Was it that difficult to predict that the losing party, seeing those pictures, would jump on them as evidence of impropriety, hence, evidence of some bias whether founded or not?
If football referees cannot be allowed to celebrate with a football team after a football game, how much a hint of scandal it is for Ansah to be seen as celebrating with winner of an emotive exercise as elections are?
At a time the civil society is seeking to conduct a whole nationwide demonstration just to push her out, and three major parties say the elections were marred by serious irregularities, where is Ansah’s pride in holding on to a job whose crucial stakeholders don’t want her anywhere near it.
The vote of confidence, mostly lack-of, has been loud and clear. And after all the planning and her best efforts at characterizing these elections as free, fair and credible, the unprecedented protests in the streets, the teargas, the tippex, court cases, all leave an egg in Ansah’s face. They disapprove that these elections were anything near fair and credible. Free, wont matter at the end!
Golden Matonga Today 