Some parts of the world look just the same. If you look closely, carefully – their going-ons look exactly the same.
Never mind what Matt Damon says here about the world, in which he says:
“… that the wrong people are in power. And the wrong people are out of power.That the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way, as not simply to require a small reform, but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth…Now if you don’t think, if you just, listen to Tv and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad…”
…if you look closely enough, some things seem to be slowly replicating themselves, over and over, across the globe. Indeed there is nothing new under the sun.
Take Gloria Arroyo (see short profile via BBC here) the former president of the Philippines, for example. While some of her supporters will inevitably counter that the case brought against her regarding diversion of disaster relief funds (see another here), and misusing lottery funds (~$8.8 million) – for which she was arrested – is in fact politically motivated, few will argue that such things don’t happen elsewhere.
In Haiti – a country 10,000 miles away from the Philippines, reconstruction officials and aid organisations have been accused of diverting millions of dollars (see another source here via New Internationalist) of reconstruction funds. In Japan, after the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami, US$2 billion was diverted, according to a Japanese Newspaper. Even authorities in the US have been accused of attempting to divert funds raised and donated for hurricane Katrina victims (see source here), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has been sued over the matter.
In Malawi today, we have a president who, in my view, has a lot more in common with Gloria Arroyo, than with an ordinary Malawian woman from a village in Mulanje. (see a list detailing some of Gloria Arroyo’s government’s scandals here)
Joyce Banda has a whole string of gaffes behind her (either bad advice or she must learn to speak fewer silly things); Like Arroyo, Banda has been accused of diverting funds into private or personal projects (including using Independence Celebration funds for a PP party commemoration), and her food distribution exercises have been criticised, with some accusing her of attempting to ‘buy votes’ through distribution of maize and fertiliser. And just like Arroyo’s tenure had been, Banda’s government has been the subject of one political scandal after another. Like Arroyo, Banda has been accused of attempting to rig an election, and protecting corrupt colleagues from facing the hand of the law. Like Arroyo, her cash handouts have been criticised as wasteful, and calls of an audit as to the origins of the money she gives away at rallies have been heard far and wide within Malawi. Joyce Banda, like Arroyo has also been criticised for excessive travelling, and just like Arroyo, Joyce Banda has hired a PR company at great expense, to clean up her image, and that of her government.
And all that is even before you get to the ghost companies set up by civil servants – to embezzle funds, allegedly unexplained donations to the president’s foundation, and many other potential woes that can sit comfortably side by side with what the Philippines former president has been accused of.
But in the face of all that, including recently, a very public withdrawal of donor aid by Malawi’s donors – which minimally shows disapproval, Joyce Banda still maintains innocence.
Unlike Arroyo, who apologised (external link – YouTube Video) for speaking to an official of the electoral commission, Joyce Banda has not offered an apology to ordinary Malawians for the harm and devastation that has occurred under her government, especially in relation to the cashgate scandal.
It’s simply just incredible how similar the circumstances can be; the lessons so bountiful, yet political leaders (past and present) just don’t seem to learn.
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