Malawi's elections

This coming election will be Malawi's fourth election since the end of one party rule. The rule of thumb in studies of democratic transitions and consolidation is that the holding of three elections suggests signficant progress forward and reduces the risk of reversal. But we should not be complacent. Reversal of our democratic gains still remains a possibility.

One of the factors that makes our democratic transition fragile is the constitution. The "first past the post" constitution we adopted completely fails to take into account salient features of our society and political landscape and creates the feeling in some parts of the country of being marginal. What we obviously need is a constitution that reflects our ethnic and religious diversity and that encourages coalition builing. When one talks to key poltical actors in Malawi one is struck by the gaps between the recognition by all of them of the danger of our current arrangements and action to change matters and introduce proportional representation. And even in the current election none of our parties has addressed the issue of changing the constitution to address the issue.

It will be sad if our democratic experient grinds to a halt because we are saddled with a wrong constitution.