Date Of Article: 4/6/2003
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Mutharika’s balancing act
By: George Ntonya
Former United Party (UP) president Bingu wa Mutharika must be a happy person for finding himself in a position that could make him achieve one of his lifetime ambitions: to rule this country. But his biggest challenge will be to play a balancing act of selling himself and the UDF to the electorate against the backdrop of growing poverty levels in the country. With government machinery at his disposal during the campaign period Mutharika, a proposed UDF presidential candidate for the May 18, 2004 general elections, he will have himself to blame if he walks in the shadow of Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta who failed to grab the mantle from former president Daniel arap Moi. “I’ll do everything possible to ensure that he wins the elections,” President Bakili Muluzi told a rally in Thyolo where he introduced Mutharika and his running mate Cassim Chilumpha. The President pledged a vigorous nationwide campaign for Mutharika who had earlier denied he had ambitions to rule the country. “I am a minister of Economic Planning and Development and that is already a plateful. I don’t want more than that,” he told a press conference in Blantyre when reports spread that Muluzi brought him into cabinet to groom him for the presidency. Born 69 years ago at Kamoto Village in TA Chimaliro, Mutharika went into mainstream politics after leaving the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) where he served as secretary general between 1990 and 1997. After falling out with the UDF, whose manifesto he helped fashion out, he formed the defunct UP under whose ticket he contested and failed in the 1999 presidential race. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was among the few people at a UDF central executive and cabinet meeting who declared interest to succeed Muluzi. Former ministers of Agriculture Aleke Banda and Environmental Affairs Harry Thomson also declared their interest. What is ironic, however, is how as a newcomer in the cabinet, he got an edge over the old-timers. “I was filled with intrigue and awe when I read that the process leading to the nomination of Mutharika and Chilumpha was very democratic and transparent,” says one commentator George Lwango, in a letter to the editor of The Nation. “My understanding of democracy is that the majority rules. However, when the majority vote becomes 100 percent, question marks are raised,” Lwango observed, adding that “when I look at the characters of Aleke Banda and Harry Thomson and the contributions they have selflessly made to the party and indeed to the country, I find it very hard to believe that neither of them could even manage at least one sympathetic vote.” What stands in favour of Mutharika is his education and experience. He boasts a doctorate degree in development economics. He has worked in government in Malawi and Zambia, the World Bank, United Nations and Comesa at very senior positions. Mutharika’s nomination has ended a protracted bruising debate over whether or not it was necessary to amend the constitution to extend presidential terms to three. That is why organisations such as Public Affairs Committee (Pac) and Forum for the Defence of the Constitution (FDC), as well as individuals who vehemently opposed the proposed constitutional amendment jubilated when President Bakili Muluzi announced on March 30 that the UDF’s central executive committee and cabinet had nominated Mutharika the party’s presidential candidate for the May 18, 2004 presidential contest. “We commend him (Muluzi) for finally speaking out. This has removed the tension that the issue brought about in the country. We are pleased that the country will now invest its energy and time on critical issues affecting the lives of the people,” said George Dambula from Pac. The convention has still to endorse Mutharika and his running-mate Cassim Chilumpha, but observers say that is a foregone conclusion. Mutharika is aware of the fact a lot of Malawians, particularly subsistence farmers and small-scale business people, are poorer now than they were a decade ago. They can hardly afford basic necessities. “The growth of our economy is far too slow compared to the growth of our population. Fiscal and monetary structures have collapsed and no mechanisms are put in place to protect peasant farmers,” Mutharika said in 1998 when he was in opposition, wondering how the price of a bottle of cooking oil could rise from K35 to K55 within a week. He blamed most of the economic hardships on government borrowing, saying: “We borrow from outside too much without knowing how we are going to repay. Now as presidential candidate on a UDF ticket, Mutharika will have to play the balancing act of selling himself and the UDF to the electorate without damaging the latter.
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