[Civsoc-mw] Mutharika gets re-elected in Malawi's Tipp-Ex election

[cammack at mweb.co.za]

Daily Maverick, SAOP-ED
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-05-27-mutharika-gets-re-elected
-in-malawis-tipp-ex-election/ 

Mutharika gets re-elected in Malawi's Tipp-Ex election

By Greg Mills. 27 May 2019 

Arthur Peter Mutharika, President of Malawi. Photo: UN Women/Celeste Sloman,
25 September 2018, UN General Assembly. Less 

The results of Malawi's May 21 election have been clouded in controversy and
legal theatre. The three-way fight between Vice-President Saulos Chilima,
Reverend Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party, and the incumbent
Arthur Peter Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party was, according to the
official results released on 27 May 2019, resolved in favour of Mutharika
who won by 38% to Chakwera's 35.4%. 

Malawians survive today on an average per capita income of just US$420, just
twice that at independence in 1964. It was then among the five poorest
countries worldwide. It is now the sixth-poorest.

Continued poverty reflects Malawi's population increase from under four
million in 1964 to 19 million now. In fact, GDP has increased by 10 times in
real terms since 1964, though the population rise has nixed half of the
gain. The population has expanded faster than opportunities. 

These are the averages. Many of the 2.5 million farmers countrywide earn
little more than US$75 a year. Malawi's 2010 poverty rate was 71%, an
increase from 64% in 1997. Many citizens fail to obtain their daily
calorific requirements.

The elites, as ever, suffer less, cocooned from the harsh realities of rural
poverty by access to government contracts and largesse, and by a steady
trickle of aid money.

Today more than half of Malawians are under 18. The projection of a 45
million-strong Malawi population by 2045 should not, on the current
development trajectory, offer cause for optimism. 

Despite the grand-sounding policies and strategies regularly trumpeted by
successive Malawian governments, there are several fundamental disjunctures
which cause the Central African nation to remain stuck at the bottom of the
development and poverty barrel.

The first is that between policies, which sound about right, and
implementation, which is routinely as weak as the institutions which are
supposed to execute them. There has, moreover, been little serious debate in
Malawi about the centrality of productivity and growth to underpin
development. There is much talk about distribution, but not on how to ensure
the surplus necessary for this to occur, at least sustainably.

The second disjuncture is to do with the role of aid. 

Donors give almost as much money annually (US$1.1-billion) as the budget
(US$1.5-billion). Yet the impact of donor spending is diffused, in part
because they're not tough enough on governance failings and in part because
of a focus on a large number of projects.

It's difficult to make an impact and not distort the incentives, too, when
the will of Malawians to reform is weak. But the institutional self-interest
and human urge to donate is seemingly often stronger, even in the face of
egregious government, than the disincentives for foreign charities not to
spend. It's cool and enriching, apparently, saving Malawians from
themselves.

The third and most critical disjuncture is between elite attitudes and
mindset in government and the core problems of poverty, corruption,
monopolies and a lack of diversification which lies behind joblessness. The
incentives for control and privilege trump those for change and growth.
Malawi is a country where monopolies and vested interests rule.

At one level this helps to explain the brazen irregularities around the
election. The maths was always going to be difficult for Mutharika who,
while he dominates the south, is hugely unpopular in the central region, the
home-turf of the MCP. He was no doubt helped by Chilima splitting the
opposition vote.

But the heavy use of Tipp-Ex on some result sheets exposed in the media may
be a tell-tale sign of a lack of respect for electoral niceties. Whatever
the veracity of these allegations, the majority of Malawians who voted with
Chilima and Chakwera will read it as such.

At another, it clarifies why as much as 80% of export and import traffic is
carried by road, despite the comparatively high costs, and why the railway
system remains precarious and irregular, yet so critical in this landlocked
nation.

The connections of politically exposed persons with trucking firms is
whispered as the most likely reason. The preference for a small,
preferential internal market for a protected elite helps too to explain why
the country has failed fundamentally to open up properly to richer external
markets in its trade policy and logistics practices.

Malawi's challenge - and that of President Peter Mutharika, the second time
around - is to commercialise and diversify, to start to build an economy
that will provide jobs for a burgeoning population.

To do this, he is going to have to shore up his shaky political legitimacy
by bold economic policy changes, made not in the interests of the
opportunists who have buzzed around his office for the past five years, but
instead in undoing the monopolies which dominate the economy. The upsides
would be obvious, and huge in such a poor country.

To date, President Mutharika has shown no sign of the necessary appetite for
such change. He may yet surprise. Hope, as ever, dies last. DM 

Dr Mills is with the Brenthurst Foundation, which recently produced a
Discussion Paper on Malawi available on the Foundation's website at
<http://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/> www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org.
He first travelled to Malawi 35 years ago.

 

Zen


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