The road to Malawi Elections 2009: Real issues pushed to the backyard

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has one of the highest HIV/Aids prevalence rates (at 12 percent); its economy is heavily agro-based, which puts it at the mercy of natural as well as economic disasters; it faces chronic hunger; infant mortality rates are staggering; poverty levels are scaring, with over half the population living below the poverty line. Yet, these are not the issues that have dominated the political speeches by parliamentary and presidential candidates ahead of the Malawi's General Elections to be held on May 19. Name-calling, ludicrous claims of murder, promises of purchase of coffins once elected, court cases and political alliances of conveniences have sprung to the foreground, relegating the more pertinent matters to the background. The 2009 elections are shaping up to look more like personality battles and not matters of substance. Looming large over all issues was the decision by the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to bar Bakili Muluzi, chairman of the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) from standing as president of the country having already served his two terms in office from 1994 to 2004. It was a contentious decision which caught the UDF by surprise even though it had long been suggested the Republican Constitution barred Mr Muluzi from having another go at the presidency. The UDF is contesting the decision in court. But as the party awaits the determination of the courts, it has entered into a 'presidential alliance' with the hitherto sworn enemy, the Malawi Congress Party — led by maverick politician John Tembo — which had the biggest number of seats in the recently dissolved Parliament. The stated aim of the alliance is to oust President Bingu wa Mutharika. Muluzi has a bone to chew with President Mutharika for dumping the UDF in 2005. The charismatic Muluzi invested his pride and finances and sacrificed long-standing friendships with other party members to ensure President Mutharika, a rank outsider, made it to the presidency. But Mutharika walked out on the party to found the Democratic Progressive Party, for which he is its torchbearer in the May 19 polls. Tembo, on the other hand, has scores to settle with President Mutharika after it emerged that the 2004 polls were heavily manipulated in the president's favour at Tembo's expense. A court challenge on the 2004 presidential elections crumbled dramatically after Mgwirizano Coalition, whose president Gwanda Chakuamba came third in polls, pulled out of the case. It is early days yet for the MCP/UDF alliance but the signs are ominous for the sustainability of the political marriage in which the parties seem to have agreed to disagree. Curiously for the alliance, the two parties earlier announced that each party would promote their manifestos, which on many crucial points are as similar as day and night. But buried deep behind mundane matters of African politics are issues of food security, education and economic sustainability. For instance, while the MCP would like to promote a universal fertiliser subsidy to stimulate a green revolution in Malawi, the UDF has structured its agricultural policies in such a way that vulnerable groups of society — the poor, the aged, orphans and others — would have free access to fertiliser. The DPP, on the other hand, favours a targeted agricultural inputs programme, where, for example, vulnerable groups would be issued coupons to buy fertiliser at K500 (about US$3.50). On education, while the UDF intends to introduce free secondary school education, having implemented a free primary school education with a worrying, if not chaotic, degree of success in 1994, its prospective partner in government, the MCP, ironically, plans to "clean up" the education system which has been on its knees for a long worrying period. The free primary school education introduced by the UDF months after its election in first multiparty elections in 1994 scored high on enrolment. Pupils, who would otherwise previously have not gone to school, flocked to the classrooms en masse. But the schools were soon overwhelmed and run short of teaching and learning equipment and the teachers were barely enough to manage the deluge of pupils. It was a decision whose effects are still reverberating to date, hence MCP's vow to clean up a messy education system that remains high on quantity but admittedly low on quality. But the fate of MCP/UDF Alliance's stated ambition of taking over government does not lie in how they would harmonise their policies once elected into power. Instead it comes in the form of MEC which has come in for heavy criticism from various quarters — ranging from opposition parties to civic society and donors. Headed by respected Justice of Appeal Anastazia Msosa, who successfully conducted Malawi's first multiparty polls in 1994, MEC had its integrity compromised and impartiality questioned in 2007 when President Mutharika appointed commissioners to the body without consulting the opposition parties as laid down in the laws. It came, therefore, as no surprise when the UDF accused the electoral body of being an appendage of the DPP after President Mutharika's running mate, Joyce Banda, said at a political rally, and before MEC had finalised scrutinising the nomination papers, that Muluzi would not stand in the elections. Barely a week later, Muluzi was barred by MEC. The opposition also view MEC as a lame duck that has failed to rein in President Mutharika whom they accuse of propagating hate speeches, especially after one in which he accused Tembo of murdering his father. The opposition argued that Mutharika's conduct was contrary to Section 61 (1) of the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections Act (PPE) which reads: "notwithstanding guarantees of freedom of expression, information and assembly, no person shall, in campaigning, use language which is inflammatory, defamatory, insulting, or which constitutes incitement to public disorder, insurrection, hate, violence or war." "We will lodge an official complaint to MEC. Mutharika should not abuse his presidential immunity because he shall one day be answerable. Tembo never issued any threats to anyone. All he said was, those in power must enjoy it while it lasts because they will never get that chance once the opposition rules," MCP spokesperson Ishmael Chafukira told The Nation of March 20, 2009. As if that is not enough, the opposition and civil society have accused MEC of treating state-controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) with kids' gloves as it broadcasts propaganda against the opposition and has given the others parties no time to be heard on the radio, contrary to the PPE Section 63. But that is not the only thing MEC has come in for heavy scrutiny. When the voters' roll was opened to the public for verification early April, it was noted that that it had glaring mistakes which cast doubts over the success of the elections. According to one of the country's dailies, The Daily Times, voters largely shunned the verification exercise while those that did pitch up faced problems ranging from wrong information being attached to wrong voters to untrained clerks. MEC Public Relations Officer Fergus Lipenga admitted that the clerks had not been given an induction course owing to lack of funds. "Apart from that, MEC also gave each one of the clerks a manual that explained how to handle different scenarios pertaining to the voters' register," explained Lipenga in the paper's edition of April 7. MEC employed more people to "clean" up the system and promised to re-open the verification exercise but with time at a premium, it remains to be seen how far MEC can go in cleaning up its act. With MBC closed to the opposition, other radios, mostly with limited reach, have given opposition parties room for comfort. However, according to monitoring reports published in the local media, other than DPP, MCP and UDF, the other parties have had limited privileges in reaching out to the critical masses. But it is the innovation of the only independent presidential candidate James Nyondo that has made the other candidates — and their parties — to look beyond the radio and the press to embrace the new media. Nyondo set up websites (servantsofthenation.com and jamesnyondo09.com) to complement his campaign on the ground and he also made his presence felt on social networking, facebook.com. It was a first for a presidential candidate. Soon, Muluzi, MCP and the DPP were to follow. But Malawi's connectivity to information super-highway remains patchy and not many would be willing to bet on the effect the websites would have on people's decisions on May 19. There are sixteen parties participating in the polls but only five of them — MCP (led by Tembo), DPP (Mutharika), National Rainbow Coalition (Loveness Gondwe), People's Transformation Party (Kamuzu Chibambo), Republican Party (Stanley Masauli) and the Alliance for Democracy (Dindi Gowa Nyasulu) — are fielding presidential candidates. However, the real race for the presidency seems to be reserved for Tembo and President Mutharika, with Nyondo viewed as the spoiler. The article was first published at http://www.africanelections.org/malawi/news/page.php?news=3009