Lets Consider Broader National Interests On Palestine: Silvester Ayuba James

Next time Malawi is to vote at the UN on the issue of Palestine and Israel, I hope our representatives will consider broader national interests other than their slim religious inclinations.

Today, the Arab countries have flexed their resource muscle on Malawi: one careless decision supporting continuation of the genocide against Palestine, endless fuel queues. Now the government has got to buy oil from/through Kenya as we wait for the Arabs to forgive us and grant us a government-to-government deal.

Religious fundamentalism should not be a basis for making decisions of national interests in a secular state. Some of these problems can be avoided by simply looking at the world from a more liberated secular position.

I also would like to think that our relationship with the Arab world, particularly with respect to negotiating for better trade advantages, is not helped by certain diplomatic appointments. Imagine, as critical as Qatar is in trade generally and petroleum in particular, we appointed a devoted Christian as an ambassador there, knowingly it is a country that almost completely fits into the description ‘Muslim country’. For me, that’s a diplomatic middle finger. And it is failure in basic decision-making.

Rich countries do not like to be taken for granted. Besides, diplomacy is all about pretence of shared values and common identity, culturally or otherwise. We should have appointed a complete Muslim, fluent in Arabic and English, as an ambassador to Qatar and such other countries. And I don’t mind anyone calling such a person a sheikh.

In case you are failing to grasp the thrust of my argument here, just ask yourself how many persons in their best right state of mind would appoint a Muslim as ambassador to the Vatican and expect that to sit well with the Vatican state.

In short, while we continue to serve our slavery to the West, we should have tried the least to balance our appeasement of the West with certain critical and immediate needs of the nation that the West cannot provide and that we can get only from the Arab world, but which can paralyse the economy and potentially bring down the government if not well-taken care of. Fuel is one such resource. The never-ending fuel queues tend to present us as clueless government on critical matters, yet I am sure this could be avoided if we only played our cards well at the UN ballot box coupled with strategic diplomatic appointments to countries that matter.

For the record, previous governments in Malawi have ever voted against Israel’s apartheid interests at the UN and still managed to get along with the shark and the sardines, hence I do not think there would be any irreparable damage to Malawi if we got a bit level-headed when casting our vote on the issue of Palestine and Israel last year.

But here we are today. Struggling to clinch a government-to-government oil deal with the governments of the people whose brothers and sisters we voted that they should continue being wiped from the face of the earth. You cannot pass a judgement that my family members should be shot at anyhow by an occupier of their land today and expect to come to my house tomorrow to beg for water. I will, surely, give you pure poison.

Sad as it is for ordinary Malawians bearing the blunt, I would not blame the Arabs for demonstrating their relevance and cracking their whip on a diplomatically careless nation so that, in the future, they are not ignored.

I hope we have learned our lessons and will do better next time, for even the poorest nation in the world must refuse to be bullied some times.

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