Malawians have asked President Lazarus Chakwera to cancel any business arrangement, paid or unpaid, that this administration has made with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Chakwera administration has engaged the Tony Blair Institute to identify gaps in governance institutions and address the deficiencies. According to State House Communications Director Sean Kampondeni, TBI has already sent three experts to Malawi and they will be providing their services at no cost to the Malawian taxpayer.
However, Malawians are still demanding the Chakwera administration to cancel the arrangement which commentator Onjezani Kenani has described as neocolonialism.
“During the campaign, they told us about all the gaps in our governance structures. They told us they knew those gaps and they had solutions of how to fix them. Now, after victory, they say they don’t know those gaps. They need Europeans to come and tell them where those gaps exist and how to fix them,” said Kenani.
Other social media users expressed doubt if Blair and his experts will be working in Malawi for free considering that a 2018 financial report of the Tony Blair Institute show that the organisation received $17 million from African governments.
“These are highly-paid “experts” who will not be working for free. Perhaps, as has been reported elsewhere, the cost of Blair’s Malawi engagement is being borne by our very generous “well-wishers”,” Idris Ali Nassah in a comment on a Facebook post.
Another Facebook user Steven Mbamba said: “TBI is here to get a piece of the British govt grants. I don’t blame Malawians who single handedly removed a corrupt regime for being sceptical, especially when the same firm was engaged during cashgate (bad optics).
Blair has one of the worst human rights records having instigated that wars that destabilised the Middle East and set the path for ISIS. Documented evidence shows that the Blair War in Iraq killed more than half a million innocent people and displaced close to 4 million others who were left in destitute.
He was declared the “world’s worst terrorist” by families of Iraq war victims after a comprehensive Chilcot report was published in 2016. Relatives of military personnel killed in conflict requested that Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes, according to a story by the Guardian Newspaper in the UK
“There is one terrorist in this world that the world needs to be aware of, and his name is Tony Blair, the world’s worst terrorist,” said Sarah O’Connor as she broke down in tears shortly after the long-awaited report was published in 2016. Her brother was killed near Baghdad
Pauline Graham whose grandson was also killed as a result of the Blair war, called for the ex-British prime minister to be prosecuted for murder. “Tony Blair should be taken to court for trial for murder. He can’t get away with this anymore.” she said
He is often described as a war monger, a claim that was supported by a nerve breaking report by Sir John Chilcot who delivered a devastating critique of Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, concluding that Britain chose to join the US invasion of Iraq before “peaceful options for disarmament” had been exhausted. The Guardian called the report “arguably the most scathing official verdict given on any modern British prime minister”.
I don’t know why Chakwer is doing this? I remember late Bingu once said that we know our problems & how to solve them BUT if we happen that we don’t know our problems & we expect other people to come from across the oceans to come & identify our problems then we have a problem.