Look, I am all for this: if public officials are to be arrested for doing a bad job, then let's goooooo! It is however strange that of all the public officers that have been doing bad jobs it seems only one person has been arrested and that is kind of weird to be honest.
Before you continue, This commentary is written with the assumption that you are aware of the arrest of the suspended MANEB chief. See here if you are unupdated
The soon to be former MANEB boss, Gerald Chiunda, was
everything one hates in a public officer. If you read audit reports from MANEB
when he was there you will see how he flouted procurement procedures, how MANEB
promoted and recruited people without proper procedure.
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| Chiunda - No Angel, but... |
Some people at MANEB actually allege that they were entrapped and then fired in the most DPP way possible while Chiunda was there.
The list is long, to be honest,
there are so many things that make me happy to see the guy behind bars, but the
charge sheet of the crime he is currently charged with is really curious to be
honest.
Here is how Jarson Malowa of
Times reported the story yesterday:
‘Suspended Malawi National
Examinations Board (Maneb) Executive Director, Gerald Chiunda, will remain in
custody after the Senior Resident Magistrate (SRM) Court in Zomba reserved its
ruling on bail application until next Tuesday, February 9, 2021.
The other three accused are
the board's Head of Security, Owen Khuntho, Chief Examinations Development
Officer and Chief Examinations Security Officer, Ishmael Faki and Joseph
Chilombe, respectively.
The four were arrested on
allegations that they failed to exercise due care and attention in relation to
the security of national examination materials.
The case is related to the
leakage of 2020 Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations.
They both deny the charges
leveled against them.’
So here are the important basics:
MANEB has been shit lately and
under Chiunda. Chiunda is suspended. He is not accused of leaking the exams,
but not being careful enough to prevent the leak. He is at the time of writing
this in jail awaiting his bail application.
Cool. Firstly, is this really
something that he has to be kept in jail over? What would he do if he was at
home? Allow more leaks? He is suspended for Christ’s sake!
That is not even my biggest issue
with the arrest of this guy, the issue is that why are the arrests of bad office holders starting only
now?
Who at the Reserve Bank has been
arrested for the billions that have been stolen? Which jail holds the guy who oversaw the coffers have billions get stolen during the Cash Gate years?
Why have police chiefs not been
arrested for crimes that saw civilians die in their custody or during demonstrations
such as those of 20 July?
Who has been arrested at Road Traffic
for the fake licenses that get issued to motorists who go on to cause accidents
on the roads?
When hospitals run out of medicines
and people die, I don’t see any doctors or anyone from the Medical Stores or
Ministry of Health being arrested for it?
What about the guys that blew the
COVID money where are the arrest warrants?
Our soccer national team is also
losing too many matches and wasting billions, who needs to get arrested?
The most glaring example being MEC. A whole court found them incompetent. They wasted money on foreign lawyers and kept grandstanding until the costs to the taxpayers hit billions. Why was Ansah not arrested? Why is Sangwani Mwafulirwa not in Jail?
Remember when they got a loan to
buy shitty tractors from India and then all they did was made to apologize?
You get the picture, it seems
this Chiunda guy, as much as he sucks is being targeted for political ends. The
government seems to be looking for a way to show the nation that it is in
control even though the leak happened under them.
If we are going to hold public
officials criminally liable, let's do it, but let’s do it across the board and let’s
put the phrases in the contracts of these men and also not forget to clarify
the law to the public.
Where in the Penal Code is what
crime, people need to know, and if they know, they should be able to tell why
people at ESCOM can waste money and enter into shitty deals that drain public
coffers and yet not get arrested.
People need to know how, for example, Peter Mutharika used government money to buy buses for private teams and lied
about it and yet never even get to attend a hearing on it.
Something is not right. The arrest
of Chiunda is either an historic milestone or it is symptomatic of something very sinister.
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