“Criticism,
like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying
his roots.” Frank A. Clark.
MANY a person can
critique and thus be called a critic. However, the sad truth is that not all
that critique merit to be called such; in fact, it is only those whose
criticisms are gentle enough by presenting a balanced dimension of the issue in
question merit such a label.
There recently
emerged a critic of the Peter Mutharika government—Z Allan Ntata, a (or is it
former?) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) sympathizer. Ntata, a
lawyer-cum-politician, has attacked the DPP-led government from all angles,
and, so it appears, the Mutharika government is at his mercy at the moment.
Central to Ntata’s attack is Peter Mutharika’s supposed ‘puppetry’. It is to this
that the article’s attention turns.
In essence, Ntata
accuses Peter Mutharika of being a nominal president arguing that real power
rests in unnamed State House advisor. That the young Mutharika is indeed a
puppet or not should be left to the politicians to politick and to the lawyers
to lawyer on; for us critics, and this be emphasized, the concern here is
whether or not Ntata’s accusations are gentle enough.
Are Ntata’s
accusations of Mutharika’s supposed puppetry gentle enough? It appears not.
Ntata was himself in the remote and recent past a puppet of the current
president especially in the run up to the general election. Ntata, as Tenthani
rightly observes, “…used any available art form—be it music, video or prose—to
beat up all those who stood in the way of his dear party’s one-way ticket back
to state house.” And who was the torchbearer for his dear party? Peter Mutharika
of course!
Then Ntata did not
flinch in defending Peter Mutharika as a visionary leader with solid education
background. He had been a staunch defender of Mutharika’s leadership potential all
through the campaign period till the sweet days of the election victory. Ntata
was the right hand man in the DPP, and a strategist to boot. Should we say,
honestly that is, that Ntata, by his puppetry accusation, is simply confessing
to Malawians that he did not know that he was defending a Mutharika who is
incapable of controlling the affairs of this noble republic on his own volition
and direction? The answer is most certainly negative. Ntata knew Mutharika that
well, as a strategist, that he was a man worth the Malawi presidency. If he
actually knew of Mutharika’s puppetry, then Ntata is nothing but an unpatriotic
liar who let Malawians be in the hands of a puppet.
But if he really
knew Peter Mutharika as a capable man for the presidency then, why accuse him
of being a puppet of some unelected advisor today? Frustration; yes, the answer
is Ntata is frustrated to the core for not being ‘accordingly’ rewarded by the
DPP government. Surely, Ntata is on a mission—a mission he has betted his life
on—to prove to the Mutharika camp that he is a strategist who makes and breaks
what he makes. For he made (read ‘helped with’) the DPP-led government’s entry
strategy he would equally make its exit strategy, and the puppetry accusation
and all that jazz are sure evidence of the exit strategy in motion. Here Ntata,
as Chiipira Wachaje points, is a “Commando” in action. Unlike the Commandos in
films however, the Commandos in politics rarely succeed in aiming high-value
targets, and truth be told here, this Commando that is Ntata here will, spoiler
alert, miserably fail in his aiming for high-value target that is Mutharika.
And why will
Comando Ntata fail here? It’s because it is all clear to almost every
well-meaning Malawian that he is making this noise simply to be heard by the
DPP government. It therefore makes perfect sense to take such a person and
their statements with a pinch of salt. In all honesty, Malawians are not that
naïve as to fail to realize that he is deliberately arousing public
discontentment to get back at DPP.
In the end,
however, there are two alternatives; either Ntata did not know that Mutharika
is a puppet and is therefore telling the truth or knew that Mutharika is/ isn’t
a puppet and is therefore telling lies. Between the two, the latter seems
plausible because, being a strategist that he is, Ntata ought to have known
that Mutharika is a puppet. But he did not notice the puppetry in Mutharika
because Mutharika is not a puppet. Which is why it is tempting to conclude, as
does this article, that Ntata wants to get back at his erstwhile friends—the
DPP. So, whatever it is he thinks DPP owns him, he shouldn’t drag Malawians
into fighting his personal battles.
So next time Ntata,
and all other critics, want to criticize this or any government—present or past,
let them do justice to Frank A. Clark by making sure that their criticisms,
like rain, are “gentle enough” to aid citizens’ objective assessment without
destroying the same. Otherwise Ntata’s criticisms of DPP-led government are not
doing Malawians any justice as are personal and not gentle enough as to nourish
Malawians’ objective assessment of the government of the day.
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