Since its inception, graft-busting body Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has been mired in controversy, losing credibility each passing year. There have been big question marks made over its professionalism, effectiveness and trustworthiness.

News that Capital Hill has finally come to its senses to liquidate national flag carrier, Air Malawi, and form another company is commendable.

Days are turning into months into the 2012/13 growing season and the Farm Input Subsidy Programme on which many poor Malawian farmers lean on for inputs does not inspire much hope.

Government's payout of a whopping K70 million compensation to former Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director Alex Nampota for terminating his contract prematurely is one of the numerous cases where Malawians taxpayers are being punished for the sins committed by decision makers in government who merely hold their positions on trust.

The bashing game on the political front continues unabated, a sure reminder of the art of politics of vindictiveness that people entrusted with the leadership of this country execute with such finesse.

Just two days ago, the United Democratic Front (UDF) national chairman Atupele Muluzi announced that he was quitting his cabinet portfolio because of alleged insults from People's Party officials.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, a historian and moralist, who is popularly known as Lord Acton once said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

People from all classes and walks of life commit crime. Malawians are aware of wealthy criminal suspects, some of whom committed serious crimes such as diversion of government's millions of Kwachas into their personal accounts.

Ordinarily we should have been celebrating the birth of a new party. We are not. We are dismayed by the multiplicity of parties with neither known nor genuine ideologies but self-interests.

President John F. Kennedy once said and we quote: "Don't ask others to do for you what you can do for yourself".

The war of words between 'opposition' Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and 'ruling' Peoples Party (PP) continues with each side firing salvos at the other.

"Political harlotry". "Transactional and not transformational leaders". These are terms coming out of the two-day conference that Public Affairs Committee (Pac) had in Blantyre and those descriptions could not have come at a better time and to a better country.

The advent of multiparty democracy about 20 years ago brought new challenges like finding ways of sustaining democracy to avoid backsliding into the system which was rejected in the 1993 referendum. None one will be a winner if we go back to the system which served its purpose in the past.

The political wrangles which have been dogging the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) over the past few years do not reflect what the party is supposed to stand for. A party divided into two factions that has miserably failed to sort out its differences cannot claim to be 'united' and 'democratic'.

That a truck carrying 600 bags of fertiliser to Mangochi meant for the fertiliser subsidy programme which contained sand is as frustrating as it is retrogressive.

The 53,000-hectare Viphya Plantation in Mzimba has been under siege for many years and as if to testify how the authorities have failed or deliberately looked away from restoring the pride this plantation has been, the destruction has now taken the form of people opening fields for crop production.

The 2013 World Bank Doing Business Report released yesterday should serve as a wake up call to our authorities and the need to learn big lessons from it to salvage hope for impoverished Malawi.

We commend the High Court in Lilongwe for coming to the rescue of 374 clients who bought land from Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) in Area 49 in the city, but whose land was grabbed by some unscrupulous individuals.

REPORTS of a wrangle between a Member of Parliament in Kasungu and the community over who to occupy the house that was built under Constituency Development Fund is a waste of resources, time and it is needless.

If there is one commodity for which the government should show seriousness and decisiveness, it is fuel.