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| Columns |
| My Diary |
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by
Steven Nhlane, 15 July 2006
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05:11:56
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The circus in Parliament
There is need for the National Assembly to scale up the level of debate in the House to enable the issues it discusses to receive the maximum attention and scrutiny they deserve. I am sorry to say that if what I watched on TVM on Tuesday evening, is the order of the day in the House, then we have a long way to go to begin to give people value for their money.
An MP from Nsanje asked an innocent question: what was government doing to improve telecommunication in his area? Then what does he get for an answer from the honourable Deputy Minister of Information and Tourism, John Francis Bande? Visit our offices.
My foot!
If the 190-something MPs have to drive all the way from their constituencies to Capital Hill in Lilongwe just to get answers from ministers for questions deposited with them so many days earlier, then we are in for a joke.
What I saw as the problem was the Deputy Minister’s failure to tell the truth. The Bible says “truth shall set you free”. This man had no answer to the inquiry from the Nsanje MP but he (Bande) still wanted to look intelligent. So, he fashioned out an answer. The best thing would simply have been to tell the MP that he was blank and that his boss, Patricia Kaliati, who was not in the House then, was in a better position to answer.
But apparently, Bande wanted to be the good boy he has always been to his boss—by all means not to embarrass her.
And just as I thought, the Nsanje MP and two other MPs, including Leader of Opposition in the House John Tembo queried Bande to say what he had given was not an answer. What a coincidence! Just then, Kaliati walked in. Whereupon the din for her to answer the question began to fill the air.
At this point, my long time friend and former classmate at Chirunga, Henry Chimunthu-Banda, who is Leader of Government Business in the House, rose on a point of order to say it would be unprocedural for Kaliati to answer a question which her deputy had already attended to.
To cut a long story short, Madam Deputy Speaker Esther Chilenje overruled Chimunthu-Banda and Kaliati fished out the prepared answer from her hand bag and delivered it. “MTL is looking into that through a project it is implementing in Sorjin area.” As simple as that.
There now came the vicious Lilongwe North West MP Ishmael Chafukira, deservedly with the last laugh.
“There you are. Has the Minister not embarrassed her deputy?” he intoned. Chafukira must have been enjoying all this. He suggested that to avoid such embarrassing situations in future, ministers should be punctual. Obviously he scored a point. Why did Kaliati report for business in the House late? What business that she deemed more important than Parliament’s was she attending to that might have delayed her? She did not ask the Deputy Speaker to defend herself. There was nothing to defend.
But I have one more suggestion for cabinet ministers. It is obvious that by the nature of their schedules, they cannot be expected to be available for Parliamentary business all the time. But when they won’t be available, that is when deputy ministers should come to their rescue. The word is delegation. Kaliati should have briefed Bande that she would be late for Parliament and handed over the answers.
But it also looks like Kaliati, like many other MPs and ministers, had too laissez faire an attitude with Parliamentary business. She knew she had questions to answer. She had not handed over anything to her deputy, but she did not care what time she was going to be in the House. Many ministers and MPs score miserably on time management. They have no sense of time. But Kaliati has earned the unenviable reputation of showing up at functions where she is guest of honour, very late.
But one MP, either MCP or UDF—who rose on a point of order—overreacted. He did not deserve to be given the floor. But since the good Deputy Speaker did not know what this MP wanted to say, she gave him the floor. What he poured out gave the impression he had a grudge to settle with Bande.
“This man is intellectually challenged!” he boomed on the microphone. He had opened a can of worms.
By now, the petty squabbling had as much got to the nerves of the Deputy Speaker as it did mine, and she did the right thing to curtail debate on the matter.
To me, the MP who dubbed Bande intellectually challenged, came out more scathed and looked more of a crown than the Deputy Minister.
One word to my friend Chimunthu-Banda: Don’t defend those colleagues of yours who report in the House late. So far you have not disappointed me as Leader of Government Business in the House. There are several of you good friends, former classmates and colleagues I feel proud of, who include David Faiti na mwana wakwithu, msena uyu, Steven Malamba.
––Feedback: stevenhlane@yahoo.co.uk
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