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| Opinion |
| Editorial |
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by
Editor, 10 July 2006
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07:48:55
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‘There shall be full local assemblies’
There is something suspicious about the way government keeps saying local government elections are not a priority at the moment.
By first saying that there are no sufficient funds for the exercise (when the Electoral Commission made us believe the issue was about the date only and that donors were ready to fund the exercise) and then arguing that there are other national priority issues other than the polls, government seems to be pushing itself into an unnecessary corner.
Of course, Malawi has had urgent priorities like the just-ended hunger and need for life-saving subsidised fertiliser. There is also the ongoing struggle with HIV and Aids and its effects on the economy. The list is indeed long.
But there is also the argument that some of these issues may best be dealt with the people themselves at grassroots level. This is the very reason government started devolving its powers to local assemblies, through the famous decentralisation process, so that the people take charge of their destiny within the local framework.
Now for the same government to turn around and start saying it does not have resources for ensuring representativeness at these assemblies smacks of something wrong. Wrong not only in the sense that it negates all decentralisation efforts and resources spent so far, but it also stalls progress and ownership of ongoing projects.
One also wonders which direction the country’s democratisation process is taking, because since the winds of change started in the early 90s, the catch-phrase has been “empower the people to make decisions affecting their lives.” This has also been understood to mean another way of strengthening our new, participatory democracy.
But what we hear from the State sounds strange. It reminds one of how dictatorship took root in newly-independent Malawi in the 60s and 70s; a chapter nobody wants to relive today. This is why everybody—MPs, civil society groups, opposition parties, individual social commentators and, in the last few weeks, our major donors—is saying “let the local polls take place”.
Don’t deny people the power to vote for their representatives and run their affairs, with their taxes.
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