Contaminated grail

Take this, for instance: Vice-President Saulos Chilima, that talented technocrat Peter Mutharika drew out of the corporate world to partner him at the 2014 presidential election, has never had complete peace in his position. He has been reduced to President Lazarus Chakwera’ s tagalong at national events and sometimes an early riser to see Chakwera off at…

Malawi’s vice presidents seem to be adamantly drinking from the same grail—theirs is a poisoned position that they hardly ever exploit to its fullest.

Take this, for instance: Vice-President Saulos Chilima, that talented technocrat Peter Mutharika drew out of the corporate world to partner him at the 2014 presidential election, has never had complete peace in his position.

It has been the case with his predecessors.

Like was the case during Mutharika’s reign, Chilima is visibly there in government to make a virtue of necessity.

He has been reduced to President Lazarus Chakwera’s tagalong at national events and sometimes an early riser to see Chakwera off at Kamuzu International Airport to some hopeless international summit.

In most cases, he is forced by protocol to do that.

You do not see absolute persuasion in his eyes and languid grin.

He simply stands on the traditional line to shake the President’s hand at his departure and return to dismiss the Guard of Honour mounted by the Malawi Defence Force.

That should not be the distinctive role of a vice president. He should work.

But in the Tonse Alliance affairs, histrionic politics is at play.

The coalition’s leading partner, Malawi Congress Party (MCP), has made several hints that it does not want Chilima to sniff the possibility of leading the country.

MCP senior members have openly said Chakwera will stand at the 2025 presidential poll, effectively dismantling any supposed pact that might have been previously made.

So, Chilima will not be given any serious public assignment, because that would mean raising his profile and turning him into a formidable force. That must be the whole idea.

He should rather be a senior government official without portfolio and just waiting for the President to engage in some public activity where he, too, has to appear.

It is not even about the declaration that Chakwera made this other day, that after the vice president had been fingered in corruption allegations, he should be divested of all public responsibilities.

It is about subduing him in a political way, and that seems to be working.

In the larger scheme of government affairs, the vice president is not a wanted person. That is why even when Chakwera appears to be very overwhelmed, he will still hop from one event to another when there is a possibility of delegating Chilima.

The President used to do that during the first days of the alliance’s time in power.

He could order Chilima to assemble a team of skilled officers to help him come with a comprehensive roadmap of overhauling the public service so that it is as effective as possible.

The vice president did and submitted a report, which Chakwera is now saying is not for every Jim and Jack, but for him to work on the recommendations.

Those privy to the document say it contains great ideas which, if taken on board, would drive Malawi to prosperity.

For political reasons, the report has remained a secret property and Chakwera and his henchmen are doing everything in their power to sit on it.

Chilima must really feel used. All the deadlines he was given to produce the report have turned to be insignificant.

He must further be sad or angry that he is being disenfranchised by a system he passionately fought to fling to power.

It must be very frustrating on his part that after all the campaign he did for the alliance, he has now been reduced to someone who just trails the President to some public event where he sometimes is not even given a chance to speak.

But something is obviously cooking up in his mind and we may know it not long from now.

After all, there was a time he came out in anger and made some unusual demand—that since some MCP officials were thrusting him to the periphery, then the alliance should disband and there should be a fresh election.

Well, he might have quickly realised it was impossible, legally, to take that path and returned to his equable position.

Now is an ideal time to seriously look into reforms targeting the presidency.

We have for a long time paid the price of maintaining a system in which the president delegates tasks to the vice president.

In cases of some kind of tension between the two, the vice president often gets thrust to the fringes of government affairs and ends up getting his benefits without working for them.

The taxpayer becomes the biggest loser.

Right now, despite that Chilima is not being given ‘tough’ assignments, he is still getting his pay.

The position of vice president, in the current structure, is a shaky one.

In fact, there are wicked people who will deliberately sow seeds of discord between a president and his vice to alienate the latter.