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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Malawi Elections

The results of these elections are historic. We here in the Hole are in deep reflection over these result that could mark the first break for a politics that bore so much semblance to that of the pre-democracy days. We will come back with out reflections as the dust settles.

Malawi and Millinium Challenge Account

Malawi is poised to finally qualify for the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a rather innovative aid format from the Bush regime that provides substantial funding over five year periods or so,. A country meets certain governance/policy/accountability standards and then submits a request for funding based on its own priorities. The key documents submitted by Malawi are now on the on the governments' own website for the MCA. They not only contain vast amounts of well-illustrated information on key aspects of the economy but also indicate what Malawi policy makers consider as major constraints on development.

The approach is based on a methodology pushed by economists at Harvard which is premised on the view that “different countries do not necessarily face the same set of problems and, certainly, the relative severity of these problems varies widely”, consist of a “diagnosis” of what are a country’s major constraints and addressing those constraints rather doing everything at one go.

In its Executive Summary main document states, “The study comes with the conclusion that power, feeder roads and international corridors water and irrigation and access to capital represent the most binding constraints for economic growth at the moment. The study further identified other equally binding constraints, namely: an overvalued exchange rate, administrative barriers to trade and regular human capital”

The second document is the Concept Paper for the Energy Sector. The key argument is stated as follows: “

The conclusion of the constraints analysis conducted by the MCA‐M team is that the key to unlocking Malawi’s economic growth is to improve the competitiveness of Malawi’s exports, namely agricultural and manufactured products. This conclusion is widely supported by the Government of Malawi’s Growth and Development Strategy (MDGS) and other development partners such as the World Bank, African Development Bank and Department for International Development.

Whilst there are many underlying constraints to enhancing the competitiveness of Malawi’s exports, the investment case for the energy sector is compelling because poor power infrastructure is substantially limiting diversification of non‐traditional exports and investments in manufacturing. Malawi’s insufficient, unreliable and poor quality power supply has a substantial effect on return on investment1, adding cost and operational risk onto producers of exports which places Malawi as the country with the highest sales losses due to power outages and requires more than 40% of businesses to rely on costly‐generators. This is a burden to existing businesses, compounding other disadvantages2 of doing business in Malawi but also reduces the attractiveness of Malawi to external, new sources of investment

The government proposes US$246.8 million for the power sector.

The third document is the Project Concept Paper for the Transport Sector. Its main projects are:

i) Improved efficiency and reliability of exports and imports on rail transport to ports of Nacala and Beira:

1. Track renewal of 588 km railway tracks which comprise of:487 km from Mchinji-Lilongwe-Salima-Nkaya-Nayuchi railway; and

2. 101 km from Nkaya-Nayuchi railway towards the Mozambican border.

3. Acquisition of locomotives and rolling stock.

ii) Increased access of rural communities to major trading centers and national transport network:

1. Upgrading and construction of roads that will address a backlog of improvement works on key secondary roads linking to the primary network joining the five (5) corridors (main roads, rail and water transportation systems). The selected feeder and main roads include the following:

· Rehabilitation of the Mzuzu-Nkhatabay main road (47.0 km);

· Construction of the Lirangwe-Machinga rural feeder road (74.4 km) in the southern region

· linking to the Nacala and Durban Corridors;

· Construction of the Linthipe-Lobi Rural Feeder Road (27.0 km); and

· Construction of the Cape Maclear-Monkey bay rural feeder road (18.25 km).

iii) . Improved regulatory environment and enforcement of regulations in the transport sector:

One problem with this Harvard approach is its narrow focus on constraints on economic growth and the absence of a long-term developmental vision that would spelt out not only economic growth but structural transformation, social development etc. One can also hope we will soon see the document addressing the serious human capital constraint to Malawi economic development. But that is another matter. In the meantime, read the documents.

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