By Counsel Bright Theu
President Dr Lazarus Chakwera,
Madam Merlyne Yolam, IG Malawi Police Service,
Dear both of you and good morning,
Your loud silence and failure or hesitation to reign in due powers vested in you in the face of repeated machete-wielding gangs menacing lethal violence on the streets, a display you President Dr Lazarus Chakwera justifiably condemned when the same happened during your predecessor government, is appalling, irresponsible and reckless. Sad that anyone has to even say this. Such displays of violence and the kind of politics that deploys these methods led to the likes of Billy Mayaya almost being killed in broad day light as police watched by.
Elsewhere in the world machetes have been used in some of the worst carnage of human life. Your calculation to earn political dividends from these primitive stunts is utterly misguided. You ain’t that cheap, are you Sir? Are you? Yea? No? Are you? Your inertia in the face of this, now common phenomenon, is not anything close to wisdom, in case this is the advice you have received from those who have your mind. No matter how much you think this is a wasted place and you don’t so much care, its still a country. Real people with real lives live and will live here. Those living here now are also having children and will have to bequeath this place and its systems to them. It is grossly irresponsible for you to watch by as violence gets re-entrenched as part of politics especially in the run-up to elections during which naturally the country gets tensed up.
I acknowledge that these public displays of violence with accompanying menacing rhetoric have also been used by your political rivals. But at this time, when you are the duly elected President, and duly appointed Inspector General of Police, respectively, the buck, as they say, stops with you two in either event. You do well to dispel the distinct impression that you are behind or approve of deployment of menacing gangs, which would be a new low in the national cesspool of hooliganism.
One has to say, can you just do the damn thing you are supposed and have been entrusted to do.
Peace.
