Ken Lipenga- Government PR Gaffe with 2012/13 National Budget or a blessing for Malawi?

Malawi’s Finance Minister Dr Ken Lipenga today, Friday, June 8^th, presents to parliament government’s financial plan for the year 2012/13, amid calls for his resignation. This follows his own revelation that the former government led by the DPP lied to the nation by presenting to parliament budget figures that were aimed at deceiving the country that the former government’s 2011/12 Zero Deficit Budget was a success.

The Ministry of Finance and the Malawi Revenue Authority conspired that the latter borrow money from banks to make up for tax under collection and create the impression that all was well with government coffers.

Ken Lipenga was Minister of Finance, a post he still holds, when these transactions were being effected but he claims all this was done behind his back, hence cannot resign as demanded by some sectors.

That Ken Lipenga is guilty or innocent in this is not yet known. What is known and cannot be disputed, though, is that his credibility as Minister of Finance has been severely battered.

Late Mutharika's family on Commission of Inquiry - Misplaced shock

According to www.zodiakonline.com the family of late Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi's third president, are frowning upon the Commission of Inquiry that his successor Joyce Banda instituted to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of her predecessor in April, 2012.

“We want to put it on record that we the bereaved family did not at any point request for a Commission of Inquiry and we will not be party to it. Why would we do that when we know all the facts surrounding the death of our late beloved,” a statement from the family reads in part as quoted by Zodiak.

Whether the commission of inquiry is necessary or not I think late Mutharika's family has got it wrong here. I don't think it has to take the family's request for government to investigate anything to do with a former head of state.

What do our parliamentarians believe in?

Something ridiculously disappointing about the conduct of our parliamentarians. It just seems they don't have any ideological campus at all.

Some reflections on education for foreigners in China

In  China  if  you  meet  a  foreign  student  pursuing  a  programme  taught  in  Chinese  and ask them about  their studies, the likely response you  will get is one that tells  you theirs is a sad  story  worth listening to. You  will be told of the frustration and  the stress that the students   suffer  due to their failure to understand lectures, not because of the difficulty of the concepts presented – well they could be – but because the  students’  competence  in  Chinese  language  is  too  basic  for  university  studies. Why is this so? 

The tool with which I hit a taxi driver

I am a black African man, with a black skin, studying in China. I have been in this beautiful country since 2009. Well, being black in China causes a mixture of attitudes and feelings among Chinese. You see some staring at you with awe, not believing that what their eyes are seeing is a black person.

You see others, especially girls, with seemingly exaggerated excitement on their faces. Sometimes such girls, most of them pretty, will ask if they could take a photo with you. It is a request I grant most times, after which they giggle away, celebrating the just ended ‘life-time’ opportunity of seeing a black person in flesh. And as I wrote this article in MacDonald’s over a chicken burger and a coke, some three teen-age girls passing by beckoned one another’s attention to look at me, murmured things I couldn’t pick and chuckled away like some kindergarten kids.