[Civsoc-mw] Mw Elections, Wash Post

[cammack at mweb.co.za]

 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/> Monkey Cage Analysis
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/20/millions-malawians-go-pol
ls-tomorrow-will-they-vote-change/?tid=ss_tw
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/20/millions-malawians-go-po
lls-tomorrow-will-they-vote-change/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.9ce1a95af7e8>
&utm_term=.9ce1a95af7e8 

Millions of Malawians go to the polls tomorrow. Will they vote for change?

The outsider candidate is promising to 'drain the swamp.'


Malawian President Peter Mutharika arrives at the Democratic Progressive
Party's final election rally in Blantyre, Malawi, on Saturday. (Thoko
Chikondi/AP) 

By  <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kim-yi-dionne/> Kim Yi Dionne and


Boniface Dulani 

May 20 at 5:00 AM 

 <https://malawi24.com/2019/05/14/mutharika-responds-to-death-rumours/>
Rumors circulated last week that Malawian President Peter Mutharika, 78, was
seriously ill or dead - and that his party's leadership was hiding this
because of Tuesday's elections in which Mutharika is seeking reelection.
Meanwhile, Mutharika's opponents, including Vice President Saulos Chilima,
46, now an opposition candidate, held many campaign events, touting their
energy and vitality.

Malawians will vote in the country's sixth election since the 1994 end of
single-party rule. Citizens will vote for three offices: president, member
of parliament and local government councilor. But it's the presidential race
that has captured everyone's attention.

[
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/14/malawians-are
-missing-their-president-the-last-time-that-happened-the-president-was-dead/
> Malawians are missing their president. The last time that happened, the
president was dead.]

Here are the three real contenders

Mutharika, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is facing stiff
competition. Of the seven candidates, two are particularly close: Lazarus
Chakwera, 64, the parliamentary opposition head, who's run before; and
Chilima, the vice president.

Chakwera is president of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), which was the
ruling party during the country's dictatorship (1964-1994). A former church
pastor, Chakwera serves as the MP for Lilongwe Northwest constituency and
hails from Malawi's central region, where the MCP's support is strongly
concentrated.

Except during the 2009 elections, presidential competition in Malawi has
been
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510341003700394?casa_token=Cy
7SG_XHKL0AAAAA:wCrqJ2nJm9S3tHPxHVTkdjualKQWbZI6pnylIzdGxnmE6UAO7v00nkyf4iu5R
74vj8KQ7igQW7mh> regional: Malawians in the central region favor
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/2020-presidential-hop
efuls/?tid=a_inl_auto> presidential candidates from the center, Malawians in
the southern region favor fellow southerners, and so on. Presidential
candidates choose running mates from regions different than their own to
draw support from beyond their strongholds.

Chakwera's VP pick, MP Sidik Mia, is from the south. A devout Muslim, Mia
could attract votes from Malawi's Muslim population, which has traditionally
voted for the United Democratic Front party. Chakwera will also draw support
from the northern region, where his
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0010414015621080?casa_token=nP
Z0J_dkuA0AAAAA:c7Oy3LYcQf41jPqBjGF9-nNuYIM6QevhiDSkZlrV84JVB111FpFg8iUpu3Dbc
TeIw0wayB-vEOZs> wife is from, in part because he's been endorsed by former
president Joyce Banda, who was supported by the north in the
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414000948> 2014
election.

[
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/04/can-your-spou
se-help-you-get-elected-heres-what-data-from-africa-say/> Can your spouse
help you get elected? Here's what data from Africa say.]

Chilima is the third serious contender. Chilima's ascension to vice
presidency on the 2014 DPP ticket was the first time he'd been elected to
public office. He comes to politics from an executive position at Airtel,
one of Malawi's mobile service providers. Chilima hails from the central
region, likely one reason why Mutharika chose him as his running mate in
2014 - to draw support away from the MCP.

Chilima has been critical of the ruling party, charging that the DPP -
including its leadership - was deeply enmeshed in corruption. Chilima left
the DPP in 2018 to join a burgeoning political-movement-turned-party, the
United Transformation Movement (UTM), which nominated him to run for
president. Branding himself a political outsider, Chilima urges Malawian
voters to " <https://twitter.com/UTM_Mw/status/1127516179868917760> drain
the swamp" by electing him and his fellow UTM candidates for parliament to
fight corruption.

Chilima's running mate is Michael Usi, another political outsider. Usi hails
from southern Malawi and previously worked as Malawi's director of the
Adventist Development and Relief Agency.

Mutharika's running mate is Everton Chimulirenji, minister of Civic
Education, Culture and Community Development and an MP from Chilima's home
district in the central region. Chimulirenji was hardly known before
becoming Mutharika's running mate.

Rarely do VP candidates matter in Malawian elections. But given the rumors
about Mutharika's ill health, voters may consider the strength of VP
candidates, and whether they would govern well if they assumed the
presidency.

Why has Mutharika's health loomed large this election?

Rumors about Mutharika's health came two weeks after several leading DPP
figures, including his running mate, had confused him with his late brother,
Bingu wa Mutharika, and described the president as
<https://malawi24.com/2019/04/25/chimulirenji-kills-peter-mutharika/>
deceased. And these rumors are
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/14/malawians-are
-missing-their-president-the-last-time-that-happened-the-president-was-dead/
?utm_term=.da974791e85e> not the first time Malawians wondered about Peter
Mutharika's health.

There's history behind Malawians' concern. In 2012, then-president Bingu wa
Mutharika died of cardiac arrest at age 78. The death was
<https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/112/446/111/10235> kept
secret from the public for two days, at which point his estranged VP, Joyce
Banda, assumed the presidency.

Given Malawi's youthful population - just over half of the
<https://www.mec.org.mw/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Final-Voter-Registration-
Figures-With-Transfers-and-Youth-Statistics-.pdf> registered voters for
these elections are under 35 - the electorate might favor Chilima, who has
made a deliberate effort to target the youth vote, exemplified in his wife's
recent viral  <https://twitter.com/simonallison/status/1123971332662808578>
rap video.

Malawi's electoral system favors the (unpopular) incumbent

Mutharika has an incumbency advantage. His campaign uses a fleet of
government vehicles and he gets most of the coverage from the publicly owned
Malawi Broadcasting Corporation television and radio. Malawi's traditional
leaders are banned from endorsing candidates, but several openly endorsed
Mutharika, urging their subjects to vote for him.

Mutharika needs these advantages. It is not obvious he will win the
election, and if he does, he'll likely do so without a majority. There are
no publicly available data for nationally representative surveys collected
immediately before the 2019 elections. Still, we can share some insights
from the 2016/2017 wave of  <http://afrobarometer.org/> Afrobarometer and
from a September 2018 poll conducted by Malawi's Institute of Public Opinion
and Research ( <http://ipormw.org/> IPOR). The IPOR survey highlights the
impact of Chilima/UTM entering the fray:

*	In the Afrobarometer survey, MCP and DPP presidential candidates had
the most support, with 32 percent and 27 percent, respectively. However,
UTM's entry appears to have eaten into MCP support. While DPP support
remained at 27 percent in the IPOR survey, MCP support had dropped to 24
percent with the upstart UTM preferred by 16 percent of Malawians.
*	As for parliamentary races, the 2018 IPOR survey showed the same
preference order as the presidential race, albeit with reduced margins: 27
percent of voters said they would vote for a DPP parliamentarian, 23 percent
for MCP and 10 percent for UTM.

[ <https://wapo.st/getmonkeycage> Don't miss anything! Sign up to get TMC's
smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week.]

Boniface Dulani ( <https://twitter.com/bonidulani> @bonidulani) is a senior
lecturer in political science at Chancellor College, University of Malawi
and the operations director of Afrobarometer, a cross-national public
opinion survey conducted in more than 30 African countries. 

*	 <https://www.washingtonpost.com> washingtonpost.com
*	C 1996-2019 The Washington Post

 


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