When Balaka South MP George Nnensa drew the attention of the country to the greatest fraud of our time through which MRA borrowed money from commercial banks with the sole aim of cheating that the zero-deficit budget was not a flop it is, the whole DPP bunch of fraudsters were up in arms covering up this horrible lie.
MRA itself was vehement and emphatic in its denial. Finance Minister Ken Lipenga did not just stop at saying no. Helped by DPP MPs in Parliament, he stopped a motion moved by Karonga Nyungwe MP Khwauli Msiska who wanted Parliament to order a full probe into this Mafia-like conspiracy to cheat Malawians.
We knew right from the start that the late Bingu wa Mutharika and his DPP government were desperate for the zero-deficit budget pathetic experiment to succeed at all costs.
That is why during the mid-term budget review in January, Mutharika had the audacity of telling us that the zero-deficit budget was neither accidental nor dangerous, but that it was a good thing for Malawi.
After telling IMF to go to hell and take their devaluation blueprint with them, Mutharika rattled figures showing how domestic revenue had grown to K120.1 billion against a midyear target of K115.6 billion this fiscal year and that recurrent expenditure had amounted to K120 billion against midyear target of K127.3 billion.
Bingu added that grants and loans had contracted from 60 percent in 2004/05 to 20 percent in 2011/12 and that Malawi’s domestic revenue had grown from K65 billion in 2005/06 to K242.5 billion.
What we did not know, fellow Malawians, is that all these figures were a cook up, spiced by monies borrowed from commercial banks in the country as a very desperate and feeble attempt to prove to the nation that the budget was on track. But this was no brainier for the mere reason that we did not see any money amid deep-rooted misery and sorrow caused by shortages and non delivery of social services.
On Tuesday, Lipenga let the cat out of the bag. The truth came out that the DPP government operated like a Mafia syndicate in 19th century Sicily and it ran on lies and fabrications. And that the greatest lie of them all is borrowing money from commercial banks to cover up and create an impression that MRA was collecting enough to match expenditure targets as projected in the 2011 budget.
MRA can get a loan from commercial banks for, say, some project of theirs but the law says they can only do that after getting authority from Malawians through Parliament.
At the moment, Lipenga says he did not know about the whole scheme and so it was illegal. Question is, who knew about it and who gave the order to borrow this money? Was it possible for the minister not to be aware? Why then was he defending it in Parliament instead of encouraging the House to institute a probe? And what about the late President? Did he know about it? What about the then Secretary to Treasury Joseph Mwanamvekha, did he know about it?
At another level, how many lies have we been told by the DPP gang? Should we trust the statistics that the DPP government was coming up with, for example, on maize harvest? Were they also not mere concoctions to prove that the maize subsidy programme was a success? How do we believe these cheats that called themselves the DPP government?
President Joyce Banda has duty to make sure that we get to the bottom of this and that all those who thought 13 million Malawians are drooling idiots who can be cheated into believing in an economic experiment that was bound for spectacular failure using dubious means, pay the full penalty.
By the time I was writing this, MRA Commissioner General Lloyd Muhara was still in office. He and his team do not deserve to be anywhere near our taxes because they are cheats. How do we trust them with collecting more taxes from us? Is it safe?
The Finance Minister cannot pretend to be clean in this matter, either. He defended MRA to the hilt. He said he did not know about the whole scheme right from the beginning, but why was he defending something he did not have full facts about? I am not sure I still have confidence in him.
And then the banks themselves and they are not coming out clean. They connived with MRA to cheat Malawians. They played their part in the evil plan and conspiracy to hoodwink Malawians for a profit.
As for Nnesa, he is our national hero. He was vilified by DPP cheats both inside and outside Parliament, but he never relented in his efforts to let the truth come out.
In fact, I have it on good authority that he was enlisting the help of the Law Society to force MRA managers to swear affidavits if they really believed that they did not cheat.
One way or the other, Malawians were going to learn the truth of this matter because of Nnensa’s relentless fight.
This is what the nation expects of its elected leaders to fight for the truth. I salute Nnensa for exposing this mafioso behaviour of the DPP government and their MRA cohorts.
Poor Malawians, our affairs were being run by a bunch of gangsters who thrived on issuing deaths threats, conspiracy and now lies.
