Malawi’s New Cabinet: What others Say

GC Matchaya
One month after the Malawian people from all parts of the country gave the DPP a mammoth vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections, the DPP top brass has now released this year’s names of men and women who will head ministries as the president endeavours to forge ahead with development goals for the nation. The just-gone elections were unique and memorable with regard to the voting pattern that ensued and the absence of serious voting irregularities as such, people had unique expectations regarding the composition of the cabinet that was to follow.

The cabinet has many new faces and some old faces have lost their posts which is normal. At present we do not have the CVs of the appointed ministers and we will postpone any serious and specific comments about expected performance of individual ministers to a later time. The cross-regional or district distribution of the ministers which people are implicitly or explicitly alluding to in their deliberations on issues on discussion forums such as Malawitalk, nyasatimes, nyasanet, Malawiana and many others, is also hard to pin down and we will only try to talk about it inconclusively.

The expected performance of our new ministers is hard to predict because, since some of them are new, one would need to gather their CVs and evaluate them in light of the work ahead of them and the environment they will need to operate. We are unable to do this soon, but we bet, others will do, so stay tuned!

On the other hand, the cross-regional distribution of our ministers may not be a very important issue to pursue since it really does not matter where a minister comes from as long as they perform for the nation as a whole. Nevertheless, reading all the aforementioned discussion groups, one is bound to conclude that people are interested more in knowing where ministers hail from in terms of regions than the number of degrees that a minister has. Is it useful? I do not know, but one poignant criticism of the supposedly would-be JZU’s cabinet which circulated on the said forums was that it was going to be more of a Central and North cabinet hence leaving those in the South in the cold. Has the mighty DPP done it any differently?

Unfortunately evaluating the DPP’s cabinet in terms of spatial diversity requires that one knows the origins of those appointed, which, in the absence of their passports or any other aids, you would agree, is next to impossible to achieve. In these cases people on the forums seem to have come up with a convention/rule of thumb where names are used to proxy regions. With respect to the Cabinet at hand, I must admit that such a rule of thumb is in some ways confusing and impotent and risks yielding false results. For instance, it is tough to tell some Central region names from those of the South, which has a potential of yielding imprecise results.

All the same, as economists often argue ‘it may be better to proxy’ things than to do nothing’. Following such rules of thumb, and making use of some information from those who claim to have inside information and other sources the following are the results:
Considering the cabinet to have 40 positions (upon excluding posts held by the president and his vice), the following table shows the regional proportions:

Table 1: Distribution of ministers across Malawi’s three regions

Region , Number, Percent

south ,19 ,48

centre ,11 ,27

north ,10 ,25

Total ,40 ,100

The data in table 1 do show that the DPP’s 2009 cabinet has about 40 ministers and out of these, 19 hail from the South, 10 from the North and 11 from the Centre. In other words, a ratio of roughly 48:27:25 (South: Central: North). There is a possibility that these figures may change slightly because among the ministers, there are about one or two names which we, as well as our sources, were not sure as to whether they were Southern, Northern or Central region names. Some sources also argued that our reliance on constituencies could sometimes be misleading as anyone can potentially become an MP in any constituency.

We are also yet to know the real rationale behind the size of the cabinet. The cabinet seems a bit larger than expected and, while this might not necessarily be a bad idea given the multiplicity of goals that the government has this term, it would be useful if the public was made aware if this was the reason for this year’s cabinet size. Others have also questioned Goodall Gondwe’s replacement by Ken Kandodo’s at the Finance ministry and some have gone further to question whether Ken is the kind of brains we need as we forge ahead with development efforts. I think people should ask the right question i.e. whether Ken is indeed the best out there for the job. For instance couldn’t Professor Chikaonda be a better choice? I of course cannot question the rationale for moving Gooodall from the Finance ministry because that will be similar to questioning the rationale for choosing a new cabinet! It would be similar to asking the president why he did not include the fallen MCP, UDF, DPP and more other men and women who supported him massively during the campaigns. For example the Ken Lipengas, the Katsongas, the Phoyas, the Kalebes, kumtsaira who allegedly took matters further to accuse his former boss JZU of witchcraft, the Dausi’s etc, are also not in the new cabinet.

I think that Goodall is a very capable man and together with Bingu and many others, have achieved many great things for the country. Goodall set a high standard at the ministry of Finance and Ken and his men should realise that, while it would be unreasonable to expect them to do wonders immediately, Kandodo and his team need to endeavour to meet people's expectations about how the ministery of Finance should perform. For Goodall, time has come that the same spirit that led to his success at the ministry of Finance, should characterise his work at the local government ministry, which is, as many have argued, an equally important post needing a dynamic individual of Goodall's calibre. I wouldn't encourage the president to bow down to a few people's demands that he reshuffles the cabinet before it is given some chance to perform as that would surely give a very wrong impression to many stakeholders and would cast the government as suddenly disorganised, dishonest and naive for not painstakingly selecting its cabinet in the first place. If there are any serious observable weaknesses in the new cabinet, those responsible should find means of fixing them in a manner that upholds the government's credibility.

Ultimately, we need to pull up our socks and start helping these ministers to deliver, and the sooner, the better. As a new guy at the Finance ministry, Ken will surely have some difficulties in the short term, but we should not count the ministry dead because of him. I am hopeful that with consultations, humility and determination, Kandodo will deliver, after all, very few of the past ministers were a priori expected to deliver before they actually delivered!

So, I am certain that the new cabinet, coupled with the visionary leadership of Dr Bingu wa Mutharika, will deliver on the issues of interest to the Malawian people. It would be inappropriate of us to think of frustrating some ministers simply because we think our sister, uncle, brother or father deserved the post more. Remember we are in Malawi and here ministerial posts are assigned by the president and no one should try to cling or feel that he/she must be a minister by all means. It has been this way since independence!

One Malawi, one Vision! Here is a glimpse of the vision http://www.ra.org.mw/rp-ongoing.html
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Thanks for reading and stay tuned!