Malawi’s opposition leader has recently been in the media crying and laboring to monopolize our attention and sympathy for himself and his party by moaning that rigging of the general elections next year has already started. Humanity and nature’s instincts urge us without question nor hesitancy to immediately heed the emotional complaints of those crying and seeking mercy. We are not in control of who to sympathize with for this is the prerogative of our emotions. It is emotions that forcefully and without consultations overtake us in such situations. Yet there are times for one reason or the other we find ourselves failing to roll out our sympathy for those pleading it even if everybody or indeed most are obeying their instincts.
As the leader of opposition was making his clarion call for the rest of us to invoke feelings of sympathy to duty, I for once managed to tame my instincts. I afforded to be economical with my feelings and I discovered that it was indeed worthwhile not to have called them to duty on account of the content of Hon John Tembo’s pleas. Now I think that I will still continue being stingy with my sympathy towards politicians.
I don’t want to go into the atomic content of Hon. Tembo's worries except to wholly present it by stating that he is worried that the way the registration process is progressing there are bound to be some ripple effects on the outcome of the election. He has worries about the independence of the Electoral Commission that it is manipulated by the government and that it is not independent as it ought to be. Now Hon Tembo is not being perfectionist for being a fellow mortal he is always mindful that perfection is not of this world hence it is improper to accept a near perfect work from anyone. For him this is a scheme by a government that is up to no good intent except that of rigging the elections. For him as quoted in the Nation newsonline: “Rigging has started”. Now Tembo is not just a media professional who would want to rush to us and claim the accolades of the first to bring to us the prized Breaking News. Be not fooled. Tembo is not a journalist for you to take his assertions as being purely informative. Those that said one man’s food is another man’s poison couldn’t find any other time for vindication. Tembo is least interested in having us just be informed of rigging that has just started. His interest and cause are greater than that of the scribes. He is rallying for our precious sympathy.
Now let us take his claim as truth that the rigging has started as he so ceremoniously announces (as though it were anything enviable). If the government is rigging, whose direct responsibility is it to ensure that this does not take place? Most of us on the patriotic side will immediately claim it is everybody’s duty. But we must pinpoint specifically whose or else the public goat will indeed die of hunger. Our society is such a one where we have clearly shared the duties. No one is responsible for everything and everyone is responsible for something. We can now go and ask he or she whom I entrusted with the onus of making laws as to what has to be done or not in my society. These are the law makers whom we have tasked with legislating against all such vices as election rigging. Now this is the legion one of whose sides Tembo has been leading, as Leader of Opposition. Tembo has had a majority of legislators on his side both as MCP president and leader of the opposition in Parliament. Actually in his wailings about the rigging Tembo draws us all back to 2004 where he claims he had had an election win snatched from him due to rigging.
It is clear that Tembo knew that there is a possibility of governments rigging an election. From his recent cries he occurs to me to be a person who has magnificently huge hatred against vices such as cheating. He must be a man who likes defending and living for honesty, fairness and nobility. How privileged for the rest of us to have such a man as leader of the most numerous side of our law makers! Such a virtue pursuing man leading those that make laws! Who would ask for more? Law is meant to deter evil. Tembo knows this very well and so do we all. As to why in that privileged position we entrusted him with Tembo could not push for reforms of electoral laws baffles my reason. That is my duty which I delegated to him. Therefore that was just his duty. He had the influence. He changed the law in the form of the national budget about funding of MBC, TVM, and the Ministry of Information. Reason? These were falling short of the virtues of fairness and respect for human decency. Brilliant that was!! What rising up to the occasion!!! Then was the monumental section 65 which he spearheaded just for the zeal the man has for fairness. Despite the fact that his party had lost a meager three MPs to the ruling side Tembo overzealously and gallantly nearly succeeded in grinding government to a stop in his spirited drive to let the renegade MPs face the law they broke with classic impunity. Not with the law he cherishes!! What commendable zeal! I thus fail to make out how this steel zeal manages to melt down and later evaporate in matters of electoral reform. I fail to see why the domination Tembo commanded could not be used to emancipate the Electoral Commission so that hence forth no one and indeed no one henceforth manipulates the operations of an independent Electoral Commission and hence leave its sanctity intact?
Conventional philosophical logic has a fallacy called 'You-too' fallacy: you cannot dismiss a claim on the grounds that the person advancing it does similar things to those he is speaking against. My stand can therefore be easily claimed to be treading in similar footmarks. “John Tembo failed to change the system when he was far much capable of doing so therefore he has no moral ground to condemn the government’s rigging” so would go the interpretation of my argument.May be it is a sound deduction but I am sure not true. The discipline of politics has logic as one of its ingredients. However more critically important is the cardinal value of motives. Leadership must be encrusted to those who have well set motives. It is hard for mortal man to foretell the motives upon which another man is acting or going to act. This is precisely why Immanuel Kant the sage said that nothing in the universe is good without qualification except the goodwill, the good motive. It is Tembo’s goodwill that is being tried here. Unless he tells us the motives upon which he didn’t ensure a fair reformation of the law, we are not ready to release our tears and now treasured sympathy for him. Unfortunately Tembo ought not to call another press conference to make known why he under-used the powers granted to him? We are aware. Which one is a more enduring course in effect, section 65, MBC and TVM votes on the one hand and a reformed electoral system? The conduct has spoken and betrayed the motives of Tembo. I have come to learn that whenever man acts he is immediately in a moral situation. Immediately he exposes his motives. I have Tembo’s motives for not reforming the law. He is waiting for that prophetic day when he will be the first citizen. There will be the need to consolidate his tenancy at The New State House. Every means will be necessary. By hook or crook. Reformed electoral laws will not be one the favorable conditions that would guarantee a prolonged or even eternal tenancy at the New State House. Better not tamper with them now. Tampering them now in the name of reforms would be digging pits in which they would fall in themselves in their day of occ
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