Maravi

Political prostitution and pornography

Political prostitution and pornography
Written by Editor

It is surprising that where there is pain and death, Rupiah Banda and those prostituting themselves with him see obscenity and pornography.It is difficult to understand how one can see pornography in those pictures of death, of a child dying in birth and a mother in serious pain and suffering.

If people do not want to take the responsibilities of leadership but are more eager to take the rewards of leadership, they should simply say so. Those pictures with the pain and suffering they carried cannot be said to be pornography.

And they were not sent to people whose morals could easily be corrupted. They were sent to people who have accepted and carry themselves as leaders of our people, as leading fighters on issues concerning the pain and sufferings of women. Leaders have a duty to know what is going on in the communities they lead.

And this includes both pleasant and unpleasant things, palatable and unpalatable things. We have a duty to bring to the attention of our leaders both pleasant and unpleasant things. Those pictures were sent to the highest political, religious and civic leadership of our people. But some opportunistic elements saw in this an opportunity to try and settle whatever scores they have with The Post, political or otherwise. They saw it as an opportunity to embarrass The Post on issues of morality. We know Rupiah has been insulting us for a long time, insinuating all sorts of things, calling us queer, morbid, peculiar. If a president of a country chooses to deal with citizens he doesn’t like in this manner, he becomes a danger to himself and to the nation. Rupiah has been peddling lies, rumours and all sorts of malice against us. We say this because there is no single person Rupiah can claim to have evidence about them being queer, morbid or peculiar at The Post. He doesn’t have that. It’s sad that an entire President of our country can choose to engage in such cheap, loose talk and expect to be respected. What would happen if we decided to insult him back?
Rupiah may be President but he is not President of this country because of his high morals. He is actually a man of highly questionable morals. And if he wants to debate this issue with us, let’s open up the debate and discuss everything. We don’t have anything about our lives that can’t be discussed. His insinuations against us only go to show the low levels of his morality, fairness and justice. We say this because a person with high morals and a high degree of self-respect cannot make such insinuations against citizens when he doesn’t have any truth to back them with.

If it is issues of morality, we can confidently say Rupiah doesn’t stand anywhere near us. And we ask him to open up this issue and let it be debated openly. We have nothing to hide. The issue of the pictures, if it is a crime as Rupiah and his friends allege, is now in the hands of the police. Let’s go to court and see if anything that we did in connection with these pictures constitutes a crime.

As for those friends of ours who decided to prostitute themselves with Rupiah, history or time will be the judge. In the future it will be clear who – we or them – betrayed public trust. Today they can enjoy the protection of Rupiah and the state machinery that is at his disposal; they can enjoy the positive and unlimited coverage of the state media. But this won’t last forever. They shouldn’t forget where we are coming from. For us, these are not issues of ego or to be seen to be doing this or that. They receive funding from donors who they have to show that they are doing something, we don’t. So for us the question of appeasing anyone is not there. In the future, people will know everything about what happened: what we did and what they did, what goals we sought and what goals they sought, and who was right – we or them who are today trying us together with Rupiah, who acted dishonestly in discharging a public trust, who abandoned their mission and were serving a corrupt and deceitful regime. We are challenging them, absolutely convinced that we are defending something more dignified than the deceitful actions of these paid activists.

The lies they have tried to concoct over these pictures will one day come to haunt them. They don’t know that there is no better tactic, no better strategy than to fight with clean hands, to fight with the truth. These are the only weapons that inspire confidence and dignity. These are the weapons we have been using to deal with all the adversities we have faced over the last 18 years.

Our concern with the plight of women in this country cannot be questioned even by our worst adversaries. And there is no serious women’s organisation in this country that has never counted on our support. Very few organisations in this country treat women better than we do. All that one can do is to come and see the respect and support women employees enjoy at The Post. And if Rupiah wants to take up the issue of women with us, we are more than ready. And these pictures will not help him much. If he really cared about the plight of women as he tried to pretend at the press conference of his, he wouldn’t have allowed so many of them to die in childbirth as a result of that strike that could have been easily avoided. Rupiah has done more damage to women than he claims those pictures did. His government is responsible for the deaths of so many innocent women and children. And there is no amount of prostituting with those opportunistic women that will make these deaths and his record on this score any better. But the problem with this old man is he lives on the street and feeds on its rumours and lies and tries to use that to run the country.

Whereas we can back every claim we make with evidence, Rupiah can’t. And that’s probably why he resorts to innuendos, to insinuating that we are queer, morbid and peculiar. If actually we examined these words carefully, we will find that it is Rupiah’s actions that are queer, morbid and peculiar. We will not go far. Let him provoke us further on this score and then he will fully realise that we are able to defend ourselves with truth, with facts and indeed with words.

As for the charges they want to bring against our news editor, Chansa Kabwela, let them go ahead. We will highly welcome them to a court contest with us. They can call as their witnesses NGOCC and Women for Change so that both can learn from the court what constitutes pornography and be made to live to regret their treacherous prostitution and betrayal.

Again, as Chansa correctly told the police, for us this is nothing but a continuation of the abuse of our country’s judicial process by Rupiah and his friends. There is nothing we can do but to simply submit ourselves before the court in the hope that justice will prevail. That’s all we can hope for. We are not criminals or lawbreakers. We are law-abiding citizens with clean criminal records. Chansa is not a criminal and it doesn’t make sense for anyone to insinuate that she is engaged in circulating pornography. But that’s what opportunists do.

They always try to side with the powerful. And that’s why we say an opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view and try to agree with both and reduce his differences of opinion to petty or pious arguments. What they should just accept is that they have hired themselves out to Rupiah because there are greater benefits in doing so. They can go ahead but the fruits or gains of their treachery will not last forever. Rupiah will not rule this country forever. Anyway, all said, we wait to have our day in court.

Labels: MMD, POLICE, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 2:31 PM