The Episcopal Conference of Malawi-ECM says while the country’s leaders are responsible for the many problems facing Malawians, voters are also to blame for choosing leaders who can’t govern properly.
The Roman Catholic church Bishops said this in their letter released on 25 February.
Party leaders are too important, both within the party and generally within a country’s politics, to allow the choice to be restricted to parliamentarians.
An argument is thus made for inclusion of grassroots members in the selection. Nonetheless, one of the key responsibilities of the leader is to lead the party in parliament. Parliamentarians typically know potential leaders well, having had opportunity to observe their strengths and weaknesses first-hand. An ideal process involves both groups of the party in the choice of a leader and in the potential removal of the incumbent. Beyond this, parties have very different approaches to leadership selection that reflect their unique democratic and political needs and imperatives and these are to be encouraged and not stamped out by insisting on uniformity of process or invoking significant state regulation.
For a democracy to function successfully, voters need a selection of candidates to choose from. Different voting systems give voters more or less choice over which candidates get elected. At the lowest level some non-democratic countries will often run ‘elections’ with just one candidate. In democratic countries, voter choice often means whether voters choose individual candidates, or simply vote for parties.
There is a possible link between leadership and economic growth. In fact, leadership matters as far as economic growth is concerned, resulting from the impact of decisions and policies and their sustainability over time.
Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera (born 5 April 1955) is a Malawian politician and theologian who has served as President of Malawi and minister of defence since June 2020. He also serves as minister of defence per Malawian constitution, he has served as the leader of the Malawi Congress Party since 2013.
Before joining frontline politics, Chakwera was President of the Malawi Assemblies of God from 1989 until he resigned on May 14, 2013 to contest in the 2014 General Elections as a presidential candidate for the Malawi Congress party. That presidential election was marred by irregularities forcing the Electoral Commission to petition the High Court for permission to conduct a manual audit of the ballots. Though Chakwera was supportive of the audit, his rival, Arthur Peter Mutharika of Democratic Progressive Party took an injunction to stop it forcing the Commission to announce the results. Mutharika was declared winner by 8.6 percent margin.
Following the declaration, Chakwera announced that he would not challenge the results to give Mutharika a chance to prove himself in the highest office. In the meantime, Chakwera won a parliamentary seat and became the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly.
The Bishops said in their letter that instead of arriving at the ‘Promised Land’, the current administration has taken Malawians to ‘Bagamoyo’, a city on the east coast of Tanzania where a slave would lose all hope of being free again
Zanzibar was home to one of the largest slave markets in the world. Although the slave trade took place all over the island, three major markets saw the bulk of these inhumane transactions. The market in Stone Town was infamous for being the most brutal.
In other words, The Tonse Alliance Government is compared to the market in Stone Town which was infamous for being the most brutal. Going straight to the point, the bishops said that the government of Chakwera is the most brutal and incompetent.
Bagamoyo is a historic coastal town and capital of Bagamoyo District in the Pwani Region of Tanzania. Much of the settlement was founded at the end of the 18th century, though it is an extension of a much older Swahili settlement, Kaole.
“We are witnessing a serious lack of credible and visionary leadership in the country. This is the root cause of all the problems we now face,” reads the letter in part.
Lack of credible and visionary leadership can lead to strategies that are not grounded in the country’s capabilities or market realities. The failure of visionary leadership is also linked to poor communication, inadequate planning, and a lack of alignment between the vision and the nation’s goals and skills.
A clear vision provides direction: Leaders are responsible for guiding their organizations towards their goals. Without a clear vision, there is no direction or purpose for the organization to follow. This can result in a lack of focus, confusion, and inefficiency, which can ultimately lead to failure.
