The Maravi Post

Kamlepo Kalua, yes that guy, famously said no matter how many hills a hyena crosses it will never change its spots. It will still be a hyena.

When an accident of fate catapulted her to the high office, President Joyce Banda breathed a new life in Malawi politics by forming an all-inclusive government. This kind of helped bring togetherness back to Malawi politics. Politics was suddenly becoming such a divisive art it had to be shunned. But by proving that it was possible for politicians of all hues, shapes and sizes to work together, Abiti made politics attractive again.

I remember when the nation was waiting to bury President Mutharika she cautioned that that was no time for politics. That was when politicians from the orphaned DPP were falling over themselves to cross over to Banda's PP. She emphasised on the 'image' of the party.

So where was the protected image of the PP administration and its all-inclusive attributes during the Ngoni 'Umthetho' ceremony in Mzimba when someone was impromptu declared 'persona non grata' just because he didn’t belong to the PP? DPP's Regional Governor Christopher Ngwira is as Malawian as the next person. Why should he be targeted for putting on a Mutharika badge? Indeed why was it necessary to force him to ask DPP people not to attend the ceremony because they were clad in their blue attire while PP apologists were resplendent in their orange?

This is a stark contradiction of President Banda's professed inclusion politics. But this is the price political parties pay by keeping their doors too wide open because everything sips through. It may as well be that the idea to bar Ngwira and the DPP from the cultural event wasn’t sanctioned by the PP leadership but some overzealous lowly party operative trying to be useful. If you dug deeper you would find out that these would be people who have been doing the same for all ruling parties from the MCP, through the UDF, DPP and now PP.

If President Banda was serious about PP’s image, she must devise criteria to sieve out such characters that give politics a bad name. Otherwise it will be the same old story of the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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©2012 The Maravi Post.