Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera on Friday fired back at
critics over the choice of his maiden cabinet which they said was tainted by
family ties, insisting that the appointments were based purely on merit.
The newly-elected president was reacting to public outrage
that ensued on Thursday when Chakwera unveiled a 31-member cabinet which
included six figures who are related to each other, although not to the
president.
"The only thing that counts is merit... because for
far too long, we have defined merit wrongly in this country," Chakwera
said during a swearing in of the newly-appointed ministers.
"I believe that a just society is not only one in
which familial, regional, and marital ties do not qualify you for service, but
also one in which those ties do not disqualify you for service," he said.
Chakwera said that in making the appointments, he did not
consider what families or regions the candidates came from nor whom they were
married to.
"Many Malawians are not as persuaded as I am that you
are the right people for this job," he told his new ministers, while
challenging them to prove critics wrong by delivering "the transformation
that Malawians have long cried, prayed, and fought for."
He warned his new ministers against displaying "lazy,
abusive, wasteful, arrogant, extravagant, divisive, and corrupt"
behaviour.
"I will not hesitate to have you replaced. Contrary to
public opinion, I am not beholden to any of you, nor do I have any of you to
appease, for I owe both my election and allegiance to God and the Malawian
people," he said.
Chakwera, 65, comfortably beat Peter Mutharika with 58.5
percent of the vote last month, marking the first time in African history that
an election re-run led to the defeat of an incumbent.
The former evangelical preacher vowed to tackle corruption
on his election ticket.
His victory had brought hope for change in landlocked
Malawi, where around half of its 18 million people live below the poverty line.
Times
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