Hunger, the simple and overriding fear of most Malawians, dominates the presidential and parliamentary polls tomorrow in a country of subsistence farmers who survive on the whims of the weather.
President Bingu wa Mutharika, who has led a minority government in his first five years in office, is counting on the popularity of his fertilizer subsidy scheme in his long-shot bid to win a majority for his Democratic Progressive Party.
The 75-year-old economist tells rallies that his “No. 1 enemy is poverty and we want to make Malawi hunger-free and prosperous.”
After a famine in 2005 hit 5 million of the country’s 13 million people, Mutharika distributed grain and fertilizer, in a US$183 million program financed without donor support, entirely from state coffers.
The next three harvests, aided by abundant rainfall, yielded enough to feed the population of this landlocked country the size of New York State that hugs the shore of Lake Malawi at the southern end of the East African Rift.
Mutharika’s main rival, 77-year-old John Tembo of the Malawi Congress Party, is promising even more subsidies, but perhaps more importantly is enjoying the backing of former president Bakili Muluzi.
Muluzi, in office from 1994 to 2004, had handpicked Mutharika as his successor, but his protege turned against him and formed his own rival party. His government is now prosecuting Muluzi on dozens of charges tied to the alleged theft of US$12 million in aid money.
When Mutharika broke away, he won over fewer than a third of parliament’s 193 members and analysts say he’ll struggle to win a majority even if he scoops a second mandate in the presidential race.
“Chances are that he will still have a minority government, unable to win half of the seats,” political analyst Wiseman Chijere Chirwa said.
Muluzi remains popular, but Tembo is haunted by his party’s legacy as the instrument of former dictator Kamuzu Banda’s iron-fisted rule.
In his three decades in power, Banda became notorious for brutality, torture and gross human rights abuses. He jailed his opponents and silenced critics, for offenses as minor as women wearing trousers or men having long hair.
Whoever wins, the threat of hunger will endure as Malawi remains deeply vulnerable to cyclical droughts.
Maintaining the subsidies could prove challenging with the economy expected to slow next year, after an 8.2 percent boom this year driven by the opening of a uranium mine.
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