Malawi: Muluzi's endgame?

And so the MEC has ruled against Muluzi’s candidacy. This marks the end of an illustrious but terribly flawed political life. Quite incongruously, given his chequered past, Muluzi rose to become the first democratically elected President of Malawi. A constitutional amendment had been made to allow him to run. This must have taught Muluzi that one could always fiddle with the constitution to get one’s way

One major contribution of Muluzi to our politics was the demystification of the Presidency. His easy charm, natural affability and humour did away with layers and layers of pomposity, awe and myth that Dr. Banda had wrapped himself with.

Like all who had served Dr. Banda Muluzi was acutely aware of how political power could be used to amass huge amounts of money. And so no sooner had he come into office did it become clear that the country was about to enter a new phase of looting. The difference this time was that corruption, once the exclusive reserve for a chosen few, was about to be “democratised”. Cronies were given contracts to do things for which they had no competence. Millions of dollars to be used for schools just vanished without a single brick being laid. Privatisation was turned into massive asset stripping of the state.The uncompleted five star hotel in Blantyre stands as monument to the rapacity of his regime.

One  political error Muluzi committed was to bring religion to the forefront. Here was a Muslim who had won elections in a largely Christian country playing with religion when Malawians had demonstrated that religion didn’t politically count. He managed to raise huge amounts of money for the construction of Mosques. However even here Muluzi could not keep his sticky fingers from the monies. Khadafi’s famous drive from Lilongwe to Blantyre on Mosque inspection tour revealed that the money he had given were not used for their intended purposes – building Mosques.

Recalling a constitutional provision had been manipulated to let him run for elections in 1994 despite his criminal past, he sought to change the constitution once again so he could have a third go at the state coffers. True to form Muluzi thought he could use money to achieve this by simply buying votes.  He failed but came dangerously close to making it.

He then thought he could put a puppet in his office and run the show from behind. Interestingly Muluzi knew he had messed up the economy big time. So he promised the country an "economic engineer”who would cleaned up the mess but under his control. This was major miscalculation that has soured our politics to this very day. The his acrimony was not only driven by a sense of betrayal but also and even more so by the loss of access to the nation’s treasury.

He then decided to run again and now the MEC has brought that to a grinding halt. Muluzi is now likely to spend a lot of his time in and out of the courts to account for his illicit wealth. What a tragicomic end. He might end up where he started.