CCJP Lilongwe Diocese Bulletin

The CCJP Lilongwe Diocese Bulletin is a quarterly newsletter of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) of Lilongwe Diocese.

It aims at publicizing the activities and interventions of the CCJP Lilongwe Diocese. However, some of the articles carried in this newsletter reflect the writer’s opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the CCJP Lilongwe Diocese.

Publisher

Mr. Peter Ngulube Chinoko - CCJP Diocesan Secretary

Editorial Team

• Commissioner Ian Malera
• Commissioner S.J. Milanzi
• Mr. Peter Ngulube Chinoko
• Mr. Muyanga Ziba – Editor
• Miss Ruth Banda
• Mr. Patrick Chima
• Mr. Paschal Gawani

Our Address

Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace – Lilongwe Diocese
Private Bag A 208
Lilongwe

Tel: 265 01766484; 01766487; 09270660
Fax: 265 01766484
E-mail: justice-peace@malawi.net 
Website: www.ccjp-lilongwe.org  

PLP Citizen Forums

By Peter Ngulube Chinoko

The forums were convened and hosted by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace Parliamentary Liaison Project (PLP) and was aimed at educating the local people of these areas on roles of Members of Parliament, elections and the importance of their participation.

The objectives of the forums were to educate the public on:

• Roles and responsibilities of a Member of Parliament
• Why it was important for them to vote
• Why they should elect a credible leader
• How they can select their representative i.e. giving them the qualities of a credible leader.
• How to vote

The CCJP Diocesan Secretary gave a presentation on the electoral process in Malawi, and the advantages and disadvantages of taking part therein. Roles and Responsibilities of a Member of Parliament followed.

A discussion on why people voted generated a lot of interest. Forum participants highlighted varying points on why they voted and what they looked for in candidates.

Some of the issues that came out were the high levels of corruption before and during elections. This corruption took many forms such as giving out of food, zitenje, t-shirts, money etc to the electorate by the aspiring candidates. This affected the way they voted. Another issue that was pointed out by the participants was the lack of knowledge of the electoral process which either made them give their voting cards away or get intimidated by party cadres forcing them to vote in a certain direction.

The high levels of poverty too in these areas made the electorate accept the bribes offered by the aspiring candidates thus also influencing their votes, it was noted.

Of the many advantages that came out one of them was the fact that the electorate knew they had the power to put people they wanted into office and also be able to monitor their performance. However, the participants also pointed out that much as they wanted to hold their leaders accountable to their communities, these people once elected disappeared from these areas and only returned when it was campaign time for the next elections.

It was because of these many worrying malpractices before and during elections that PLP decided to have these forums for the public so that they could help enlighten and add to peoples knowledge about elections.

From the forums, PLP gained more knowledge on the reasons why it was easy for people to fall prey to bribes during elections and why some people tended to stay away from voting.

PLP also learnt that there was great need to continue sensitizing people on voting especially in the rural parts of the country where people had little or no access to information, be it print, radio or television. It was also noted that more stakeholders need to be involved in this education so that a wider public could be reached to. The PLP is generously funded by DanChurchAid Malawi.

Malawi's Journey to Attain the Millenium Development Goals

“No country genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform will be denied the chance to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through lack of finance.” ( 2002 G8 Summit in Kananaskis, the G7 Heads of Government Declaration)

The above statement of intent from the world’s richest countries offers Malawi the promise of substantial additional donor financial support to enable the country to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, it also requires Malawi to show a demonstrable commitment to achieving these international poverty reduction targets with good governance policies and pro-poor economic reforms. It is important to remember that while these Goals and accompanying targets are numbers, they do represent the lives and life chances of millions of our fellow countrymen, women and children. If Malawi achieved the MDGs, we could:

• Save the lives of 1000 children who will otherwise die from entirely preventable diseases before they reach the age of five;
• Save the lives of 940 Malawian women who die in childbirth because of lack of some of the most basic medical facilities;
• Ensure that all Malawi’s female children have the same educational opportunities and equal start in their life chances as boys;
• Provide clean water for people who are currently destined to die prematurely for want of the most basic human needs.

For Malawi to reach the MDGs by the year 2017 presents us all – donors, Civil Society and the Government – with enormous challenges. We have the potential in the remaining eight years to make an irreversible change to the lives of millions of the poorest people in our country. There is a gathering international political momentum behind Africa’s development and unless seized on by all in Malawi, we risk loosing precious opportunity for real progress and change for our country and our people.

Donor Contribution Towards our MDGs Journey

It is the view of CCJP Lilongwe Diocese that Malawian Civil Society Organisations, along with Northern Civil society partners should commission a study through lets say the Economics Department of the University of Malawi to identify the financial shortfalls that prevent the country from achieving the MDGs. The starting point can be other studies which have already been done such as the Commission for Africa, The Zedillo Report, The UNDP’s Millenium Project authored by Jefrey Sachs and the Zambian report, our good neighbours.

Presently Malawi needs a substantial scaling up of donor contributions and a redistribution of the government’s own resources towards MDG-related expenditures. What other methodology can Malawi follow? Malawi can start with the total expenditure needed to reach the MDGs. From there, it can identify what proportion of that will be covered by Government revenue, household contributions and currently forecast aid flows, and with these projections and estimates it identifies the actual gap that we propose, donors fill, consistent with their international existing aid flows.

From the research that was conducted in Zambia, it was found out that donors had to be pumping in a colossal sum in the range of $620 per year in the form of budget support for a period of ten years.

Looking at the situation in Malawi, as well as additional finance, there are crucial aspects of the aid delivery system that have to be reformed if we are to maximize the prospects of achieving the MDGs. First and foremost, aid must be delivered in the interests of our impoverished people and it is they, and their genuine representatives, that must be included in the decision-making over how the money is spent and must be able to monitor whether it is meeting the needs of the poor. The accountability of our government must be, firstly to the majority of our people rather than to the donors. To this end:

• Donors need to make good their international commitment to meet the outstanding MDG financing gap. This will require a substantial scaling up of donor contributions.
• Donors need to be transparent and open with the people of Malawi over how much finance is being delivered, the terms and concessionality of the finance and the conditions they attach to aid. Domestic stakeholders need to be included in the policy-design process and to be seen as legitimate contributors to our development planning, monitoring and implementation efforts.
• Aid works best where there is genuine country ownership of the policy design process and many stakeholders are involved in monitoring how it is used. CCJP Lilongwe Diocese is skeptical whether a system of secretive policy-making talks between donors and Government officials is going to bring about the best use of aid resources. Our previous experience with the previous administration suggests a more open set of talks with a variety of Malawian stakeholders (including Parliamentarians, civil society groups, genuine representatives of the poor and the private sector) is needed if we are to ensure the money meets the needs of intended beneficiaries.
• In the interests of accountability, economic efficiency, predictability of financial flows and in the wider interests of social justice, we believe that it is desirable that additional financial support for Malawi’s development is delivered in the form of additional debt relief. Our experience is that we are better able to hold to account the resources relieved from debt-servicing than traditional forms of aid transfer.

Government Contribution

Donors need some assurance that their public aid resources are being used for the benefit of our country’s common good and not for private individual gain. We are at a precious historical moment when the international community is, potentially, going to mobilize millions of additional development finance for Africa. Countries with a genuine commitment to development are likely to be rewarded with larger financial assistance. The obligation is on our Government to put in concrete reforms which will maximize our country’s development prospects. To this end, we propose the following:

• The Government must be able to demonstrate its commitment to ending poverty with transparent and traceable accounting of the use of public financial resources. Thus, we urge the Malawi Government to make urgent progress on the implementation of Malawi Growth Development Strategy (MGDS).
• The remuneration of civil servants and politicians should be based on merit and with incentives to deliver pro-poor policies. We should be basing the salaries of our public servants on a living wage for those on lower grades and with higher salaries for senior civil servants in all departments for those administrators who show a genuine commitment to the common good of our people.
• Our political leaders must embark on a national campaign to end poverty. They must show a demonstrable commitment to ending the corruption that has enriched the few at the expense of the many. Senior officials and politicians that have engaged in corrupt practices must be urgently brought to trial.

While a number of conditions have to be in place to allow Malawi to achieve the MDGs, it is not sufficient for any one party to point a finger at other cooperating partners to fulfilling their obligations. Each of the steps we have outlined above is a necessary condition to achieving the MDGs. We need to implement these in parallel and not wait for others to commit to these sequentially.