The Trouble of Righting a President's Wrongs

Being in a position where you answer directly to a state president isn’t a simple thing. Things should be more delicate if the president is as unpredictable as Bingu wa Mutharika; and almost unimaginable if the president is Mutharika himself.

The real trouble lies in the fact that Mutharika cannot only sack at will; he also has a peculiar choice of words when it comes to counterattacking his critics. He often defies conventional presumptions of how a leader would react in a certain instance.

If you have to survive in presidential spokesperson Hetherwick Ntaba’s position, you probably must study something beyond syntax and literature. Ntaba interprets Mutharika’s statements in very interesting ways.

He is a medical doctor by profession, but he seems to have some expertise when it comes to interpreting straightforward statements where no ambiguity can be traced. He can observe figures of speech in anything the president says, and strives as much as possible to interpret Mutharika’s statements beyond that which is the actual meaning.

The spokesperson always has a hard task on his hands. His job is one which only a few can manage. The man he defends is never short of controversies. That is where the trouble lies. Ntaba has one simple – or difficult – guarantee on his desk: if he has to be assured of getting his cheque at the end of the month, he must always listen to the speeches Mutharika delivers and the following criticisms. Then he has to quickly think of a way to defend the president.

But, sometimes the way Ntaba ‘clarifies’ Mutharika’s speeches leaves a lot to be desired. If he employs poetic or syntactic tenets in interpreting the speeches, then he must be doing himself and the president a great deal of injustice. We all know that Mutharika isn’t such a public orator who can enjoy the use of figures of speech in an emotionally-charged counterattack.

Yet, Ntaba always has a way of observing something different in what the president says. Take the way he defended the president after Mutharika declared that if the Civil Society leaders wanted war with him, they should set a day when the war should begin.

“Now, therefore, if you don’t want dialogue, tell me any day we can go to war, if that’s what you want,” said the president.

As expected, Ntaba had to do his job. According to the spokesperson, the president
did not mean the actual fighting of guns and blades, but the fight against poverty, disease and the like. So, the president was telling the Civil Society to set a day when he and them should fight poverty and disease because he has been “patient for so long”.

One wonders if the president himself smiled upon hearing his spokesperson put words in his mouth and twist the core of his threats. Of course, it is clear that they both understand that the threat was not necessarily going to poverty and disease, but to Civil Society leaders. But, how they reach a mutual understanding on the peculiar interpretation is hard to suspect.

There wasn’t any ambiguity in Mutharika’s war threats and people are wondering why Ntaba believes we can just fold our arms and comfortably take him seriously on his interpretation. Have we suddenly become so daft that we fail to fathom the very basic statements the president makes?

There are better ways of righting the president’s wrongs than Ntaba’s prevalent ‘clarifications’ which lost their salt long ago. Like all of us, Mutharika is human too, and is supposed to err. He is not some god who should be immune to vulnerability. And the best way of righting a wrong that has been made is by acknowledging it and apologise.

But, it appears, just as Mutharika himself doesn’t have the word apology in his vocabulary, Ntaba too doesn’t believe the president can ever be wrong. It might be the president himself who tells his spokesperson not to ‘give in’ but try his utmost to make sure his boss always appears right. That is where the trouble with righting a president’s wrongs comes in, again.

Well, speaking for a president isn’t a simple thing, and it is a job that shouldn’t be poorly done. And, defending a president like Mutharika certainly demands a lot of personal sacrifice where you have to lay aside your own principles and betray your own conscience times without number. This is exactly what Ntaba is doing. He has killed in himself the noble politician he was when he was in the Malawi Congress Party simply to tow the presidential line; to save his purse.