Maravi

There's something noble about Levy

There's something noble about Levy
By Editor
Sunday January 06, 2008 [03:00]

President Levy Mwanawasa is not one of the most experienced and polished of our politicians. He makes many mistakes and sometimes can be unnecessarily stubborn and arrogant. But there is something very noble, very decent, very sincere about this man. Of all the top politicians we have dealt with close to 17 years now, he is the most friendly and the most yielding.

Apart from one issue – the constitution review process, Levy has yielded on many things. Even on the issue of the constitution review process, he hasn’t been totally stiff-necked; he has given some concessions of one form or another.

We can list a number of issues – big issues – on which Levy yielded after some protracted struggle or public protest. The Kashiwa Bulaya nolle prosequi is one among many such issues.

And now when the issue of corruption by Southern Province minister Joseph Mulyata started, Levy was defensive. And it appeared he would never abandon his minister. But yesterday Levy yielded and dropped Mulyata from his government.

This makes Levy appear to be sincere and patriotic. Experience is the foundation of leadership. And once again, Levy has demonstrated that obligations to the people should always take precedence over loyalty or commitment to an individual, no matter what they mean to us or have done for us. Of course a leader must temper justice with mercy.

The mark of a great leader is the ability to understand the context in which he is operating and act accordingly. Government can only carry out its mandate if there is discipline, and where there is no discipline there can be no real progress.

And to maintain discipline, those in leadership have to have continuous dialogue with the people they are elected to serve and not only listen to their inner demons; they have to at all times listen to what the people say and act accordingly.

We know that some bad people have accused Levy of being weak; of being remote controlled by The Post over the decisions he has sometimes taken, especially when it comes to dealing with corrupt elements or those suspected of corruption. Of course there is no truth about this. The only thing that is true is that sometimes a leader needs to yield to the demands of the people.

And as we have stated before, yielding is legitimate and essential in two cases: when the yielder is convinced that those who are striving to make him yield are in the right – in which case honest political leaders frankly and openly admit their mistakes – or when an irrational and harmful demand is yielded to in order to avert a greater evil. And in politics, one must not be too stiff-necked, too harsh and unyielding; it is sometimes necessary to yield to those moving towards us.

And let us not forget that this is the only way citizens can take part in the governance of their country. Citizen participation is the lifeblood of any democratic governance, and without it democracy will begin to weaken. How much a government can be influenced by the citizens is a testing ground for any democracy.

The ideals of free expression and citizen participation are easy to defend when everyone remains polite and in agreement on basic issues. But those who protest government actions or decisions do not agree on basic issues, and such disagreements may be passionate and angry.

The challenge is then one of balance: to defend the right while maintaining public order and countering attempts at intimidation or violence. To suppress such disagreements and protests is to invite repression. There is no magic formula for achieving this balance.

In the end, it depends on the commitment of the majority to maintaining the institutions of democracy and the precepts of individual rights. Democratic societies are capable of enduring the bitterest disagreements among its citizens – except for disagreement about the legitimacy of democracy itself.

Now we administer the affairs of a nation in which the extra-ordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests.

The material problems that face us today are not such as they were in 1964, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form, we war with the same tendencies towards evil that were evident in the early years of our Republic, and are helped by the same tendencies for good.

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business; or in social life.

We hail as benefactors every man who, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

Our plea is, not for immunity to but for the most unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of the big businessman who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced.

Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the face of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because we feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that we ask the war to be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution.

The men and women with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the wellbeing of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavour.

There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.

If the whole picture is painted black, there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral colour-blindness; and the people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black and no man is really white, but they are all gray.

In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offence; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrong-doing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men and women.

This is the way we think we should look at the arrest and prosecution of Mulyata and at his being dropped from Levy’s government. Of course we shouldn’t forget that in our country, and as far as we know, in the jurisprudence of many civilised countries, a person is regarded as innocent until he is convicted. But if criticism is valid, it must be made.

Labels: ACC, JOSEPH MULYATA

posted by MrK @ 3:44 AM