Hot issues on the National Budget

INTERVIEW

BY JIKA NKOLOKOSA

August 2008

JN = Jika Nkolokosa

CM = Collins Magalasi

1. JN: Nothing still on budget, what are your fears in terms of general public services?

CM: Soon we will see deterioration of both quality and quantity of public good and services - automatically disadvantaging the poorest of our society. We will see poor services in our public hospitals and clinics, schools running out of teaching and learning materials, our roads and other infrastructure missing maintenance, and even the police would not have adequate resources to provide security! The productivity of this country and general availability of basic necessities will go down and this will ignite increase in prices. Again the one to suffer most are the poor and marginalised people.

In a few weeks or months time there will be pandemonium in the government, particularly the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economic Planning and Development as they negotiate into realities of the next years with donors. In two months or so time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be coming to Malawi to open negotiations on the next IMF programme – whether a new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) or a Poverty Support Instrument (PSI) – either of which require the budget to be in place. We must remember that the IMF gives signals to the rest of the donor community whether to support Malawi or not. So without an approved budget, the IMF programme will a non-starter and the country will be out of the compass of donors. The results are serious.

The Reserve Bank of Malawi will be under pressure to manage the macroeconomic variables such as inflation, interest rates and exchange rates. The private sector we have been praying to grow to provide taxes to government and employ more people will be hit in the root, and they will obviously transfer the costs to the consumer – again the poor people will have to pay more!

We are destroying what we have been building all these years!

2. JN: This deadlock speaks a lot about politicians, all our leaders, and patriotism. What is your assessment of our politicians’ patriotism?

CM: Selfish, Irresponsible and can correctly be called Criminals! In fact they should not be called leaders. They think of today, of their daily meals and of themselves and their clubs. True leaders think into the future, and they do everything they can to realise the dreams of the people that contracted them into leadership positions. Our politicians do not see Malawi as country that was there before they were born and that they will leave it as Malawi when they die! They are not patriotic, and I wonder what they want history and their children and grandchildren to remember them for. The budget bridges the socio-economic life and welfare of our society from the past into the future.

3. JN: Let us be specific on elections. Preparations for next year’s elections, already underway, depend, to a large extent, on the budget. The Malawi Electoral Commission has expressed its opinion that it needs the budget. Are our politicians really serious?

CM: Not at all. Next year’s elections are a more reason every politician and Malawian must strive to have the budget passed in time! I wonder if our party politicians believe in the future of our democracy. Without the budget, there is no money; and without money there will be no elections. Period! And they claim they believe in democracy? They are not serious. How do they expect the Malawi Electoral Commission to organise elections without a budget? The opposition needs to push for the budget to be passed and have sufficient resources for elections preparations if they are to legitimately get to power. The government side needs to ensure the budget is passed and sufficient resources are available if they are to legitimately stay in power!

4. JN: Your answer to question number one frightens me. Is the delay in passing the national budget that catastrophic?

CM: Yes, it is serious. Things look easy now because we are still enjoying the carry-over of the previous year, and more importantly because the government is using the principle of necessity to continue spending without the approved budget - a situation that traditionalists would call illegal. This however works only on domestic part of revenue and the honeymoon will run out soon.

5. JN: Why, then, don’t our leaders see it that way? Is it partisan thinking? Lack of education? Or Lack of patriotism? Or none of these?

CM: I do not believe that the leaders do not know these. It is a matter of what drives them, largely as I said probably personal ego and interest. For some, they are behaving in that manner because the ‘crisis’ is an opportunity to advance selfish or private interests, or could be party interests. You know even funerals are a source of income and profits for some. So while the majority are worried about the situation, others are praying hard that things get worse in order for them to get to their targets.

6. JN: If our politicians are what you say they are, what are we the voters? I mean why do we vote for such people into power, or put precisely, into responsibility? This, too, must teach us something on our political choices, isn’t it?

CM: We are careless voters. We entrust responsibilities into hands of people we contracted through the vote and we do not hold them to account for their actions or inactions! As voters we are not helping the situation either by sitting back and accepting to be held to ransom by selfish leaders. Malawians trust their leaders a lot, and there is nothing wrong with that. In the run up to elections, politicians come to voters with promises of deliverance – in other words, they decide their own job deliverables, when in fact it is supposed to be us voters telling the candidates what milestones they much achieve. Irresponsible leaders have taken advantage of this to the disadvantage of the electorate. Some say that the problem is with our legal system which does not facilitate the holding of politicians to account due to the removal of the recall provision in section 64 from our constitution by the same politicians. Whatever the case, opportunity for the voters to regain control of their authority is coming next year through the elections whose facilitative moneys are locked up in the budget. Times are changing fast and I am looking forward to a different Malawi, where voters determine agenda for their political leaders and hold them to account. It must be the people’s self identified needs that politicians must dedicate their employment on.

7. JN: I was speaking to the MEC chairperson Anastansia Msosa and she was worried that the budget is not yet passed because funding for the elections is in the budget.

CM: I feel for MEC. Organising elections is a very complex assignment. Having no budget in place threatens the elections that MEC has been working on for the past 5 years! There are issues of procurement, registration, training, organising etc and these need sufficient resources. The budget gives not only the money but also the predictability that is required for effecting planning.

8. JN: The issues are Section 65 and the budget. Is life that black and white that you can choose either black or white? I thought life is more complicated and ought to demand careful analysis of our needs and priorities.

CM: In my view the issue is not about Section 65 and / or the Budget. No. The issue is who must be seen to be more powerful, and how can we use this budget-time to run off with our agenda! Comparing section 65 and the budget is like comparing feet to a chewing gum and asking ourselves what is more important. The two cannot be compared. The needs of Malawians are more complicated and deserve to be given the priority they deserve. By the way, do we not need the budget (the money) to settle section 65 issues? Where will resources for redress this come from?