Election results

This election was at least as historical as the one that ended the Banda regime. This one made the first major break from the politics of mediocrity and opportunism that Bakili Muluzi had cultivated. This election confounded a number of long-held beliefs about political alliances, about the political pull of some individuals, and about the regional and ethnic fault lines in Malawi politics. There are a number of important points we would like to highlight in these preliminary observations about the elections.

First, we can rightly be proud that most of our key institutions functioned well during these elections. Add on to all this the peaceful and decent comportment of the electorate during an electoral campaigned in which hard words were exchanged and provocative statements were liberally sprinkled in the rhetoric.

Second, in many ways this marked the end of a political generation that has dominated politics over the 40 years either as members of MCP or its “Team B” UDF. If a viabrant opposition is to emerge from the ruins of this political legacy, then IT must move beyond the MCP and Team B MCP political culture. Banda era politics was never about issues but about the cult of personality, sycophancy and court intrigue . Those who had learnt politics at his feet were simply not able to think beyond this type of politics and there were at great pains to find new things to do or say. It is interesting that in cobbling together their coalition, the emphasis was not on a common, well thought vision for Malawi but about the allocation of ministries, senior posts in government and diplomatic missions. One can only hope that, chastened, the opposition will regroup around substantive political issues and let the likes of the Tembos quietly leave the scene to lick their wounds or be dragged out screaming.

Third, this election showed that issues matter in Malawi politics. It is often said that African politics are not about issues but about personalities. However this election, more than any in the in the past, was focused on development, food security, education -issues which cut across our ethnic barriers. It is this shift towards issue that may eventually change our politics. Bingu understood this and his constant refrain that the work of his hands speaks for itself was a poignant reminder of what an incumbent ought to be judged – his past performance and his vision. Tembo cited, rather falsely, the performance of the economy while he headed the reserve bank. Rather than articulate its own vision, the opposition wasted time criticizing that of Bingu and his party. Muluzi only claimed that what Bingu had done was to simply implement the UDF manifesto which begs the question why he had failed to do the same during the ten years in office.

Fourth, this election suggested that we ought to have a more nuanced view of the role of ethncity in Malawi politics. Perhaps the one thing that was most misundertood by analysts was ethnicity. The opposition seem to have so convinced some politicians of its centralitiyty that they frequently deployed in their political calculation. t. Thus when Bingu pointed a woman from the South as a running mate, there were outcries (mostly from the opposition) that Bingu was insensitive to the ethnic diversity of the country. What these elections suggested was that there are many social divides along which one can shuffle Malawi politics. But eventually ethnicity did not matter to voters... Our ethnic identities are not so deep as to blind us from elementary facts about our social and economic conditions. It definitely iwas not strong enough to blind voters of the fact the incumbent had been in charge of an economy that had grown rapidly based on agriculture which quite obviously led to improvements in people ‘s well being. Improvements in infrastructure were quite obvious.

The fifth point was that no individual holds any part of Malawi as his or her exclusive fief whose votes he/she can simply deliver to the highest bidder. Poor Tembo had been fooled into believing that Brown Mpinganjira would bring the Lomwes, Muluzi would bring the Yaos and Muslims and Richard Msowoya would bring the North simply by the virtue of his being a Northerner! Whatever they had promised Tembo, they simply didn’t fulfil their promises.

And finally the elections have exposed the vacuity of some of the political punditry in Malawi. Our most cited political pundits simply do not know what they are talking about... They kept analyising politics along the same old lines and seemed to base their views only on whim rather than research and reflection. Listening to our oft cited “political analysts” the coalition was supposed to be a formidable force; the elections would be a a”close call”; Bingu had made a fatal mistake chosing a Southerner as running mate; the economy growth had not benefitted the majority etc. The pundits paid no attention to the only firm empirical poll we had – by Afrobarometer which suggested Bingu would win by 61 per cent ( READ HERE)

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