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by
Steven Nhlane, 08 August 2003
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14:12:34
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MPs not moralists
Two issues have brought more confusion, distraught and sorrow among Malawians during the past one year than HIV/Aids. One of these is the failed bid by the UDF to extend presidential terms and the other is Section 65 of the Republican Constitution.
Thank God the Constitutional Amendment Bill on presidential terms (Third Term, or before it Open Term), now looks like water under the bridge. Of course, the ugly face it has been rearing has left scars and indelible marks on the minds and hearts of the people. It has also not helped advance the cause of democracy.
The point I am driving at is that this week Parliament passed a motion with the speed not quite characteristic with our legislators. Zomba Chingale MP Taylor Nothale tabled a motion and within 30 minutes, it was all over. The 30-minute DStv premier show on Big Brother Africa had been declared immoral and therefore dirty for the notoriously religious Malawians.
If only our legal mechanisms and legislators would move with similar supersonic speed to formulate and pass bills that are crucial to the lives of millions of Malawians, this country would have been a better place to live in.
I am talking about bills which have been in the pipeline for so long, like the one on Corrupt Practices. If passed wholesome, with all recommendations as proposed by the Malawi Law Commission, the bill will give teeth to the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Unfortunately, our legislators know that they will be among the first to fall prey to the new claws the bureau will have developed. Hence the dilly-dallying by Cabinet—the body now sitting on the bill.
Parliament also has more important issues to busy itself with than BBA show. Talk of the controversial Section 65 which does not seem to have a head or tail. In its present state, this Act is like a marauding vampire ready to deep its venom into the flesh of anybody it can clamp on. In short, the Act urgently needs to be revisited, and these are issues our MPs should be worrying about.
Instead they think they are holier than all of us and champions on morality. If that were the case, former Speaker Sam Mpasu would not have worried about the speed at which the MPs have been dying of HIV/Aids-related illnesses. Yes, the scourge. One good thing is that he did not mince words. He did not just bemoan and mourn the 29 MPs that he said died of HIV/Aids-related diseases between 1994 and 1999, he also thought about an intervention tailor-made for MPs. That is what made him toy with the idea of a Parliament village. Whatever happened to that brilliant idea!
The Parliament village concept was built around the thinking that if MPs bring their spouses along with them during the long periods they spend at Parliament, they would be controlled in their movements. That way they would not be subjected to the temptations of sleeping around with other women.
Here was a caring Speaker who knew how low our MPs can sink morally and badly needed some kind of intervention. Were the MPs dying of the scourge because they were watching Big Brother?
And what is wrong with the BBA version that TVM was beaming anyway? Nothale who tabled the motion in the House is said to have told Parliament that he had been receiving a lot of complaints from parents about the BBA show. I am sure the complaints were about the live show on DStv (Channel 37 or Channel 38—delayed for 2 hours) which show people in the shower room. But the version that is beamed on TVM is very much censored and does not show anything that the so-called parents are complaining about. Such parents should just have been advised to unsubscribe from DStv if they think the pictures they see are offending.
If MPs are so worried about their children seeing people in bikinis in the BBA house jacuzzi, they should also worry about children along the country's resorts who see people in bikinis almost daily. Let them also ban the wearing of bikinis and other briefs on the beaches of our lake and see what that will do to our tourism industry.
On this note, I want to totally agree with the Classification Board that Parliament has acted with haste in scraping the 30-minute show from TVM. It should first have consulted.
MPs, please do not moralise to us on issues you do not lead by example |
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