DR. LAZARUS CHAKWERA: THE MORAL COLLAPSE OF A PASTOR-PRESIDENT
Dr. Lazarus Chakwera,
History will remember your presidency not for servant leadership as you made us to believe, but for silence in the face of monumental looting. For a nation that entrusted its future to a man who ascended to power on the language of morality, your tenure stands as one of Malawi’s most painful betrayals.
The revelations of billions of kwacha allegedly looted at Greenbelt, NOCMA, and the East East Bridge project are not just alarming, they are humiliating. They shame the nation. Worse still, they unfolded under a president who presented himself first and foremost as a pastor, a moral compass in a country desperate for ethical leadership.
When Malawians cried out, when civil society, the media, and ordinary citizens raised red flags, you chose silence. No visible remorse. No decisive leadership. No sense of urgency. You watched as the nation bled, and you said nothing. That silence was not neutrality; it was complicity.
You spoke eloquently about clearing the rubble. Yet under your watch, corruption did not merely continue, it mutated, expanded, and became more audacious. The scale of alleged theft during your administration has forced Malawians to ask an uncomfortable but necessary question: Was there a leader at all?
While public institutions were allegedly being milked dry, you appeared detached, preoccupied with personal comfort, image management, and the security of your inner circle. The responsibility Malawians entrusted to you, to govern, protect public resources, and act decisively against wrongdoing, was treated as optional.
For many citizens, your presidency represents a tragic paradox: a pastor who presided over unprecedented scandal; a leader who led by absence.
Whether courts will pronounce guilt is a legal matter, But politically and morally, the verdict among Malawians is already forming. Your failure to act, to speak, and to show empathy has placed you among the most disappointing leaders this country has known. Some will go further and argue that your tenure symbolizes the most catastrophic moral failure in Malawi’s leadership history.
That is a painful legacy to carry, but it is one written not by your critics, but by your own inaction. And that is the saddest truth of all.- Lilongwe Times