A new Malawi?

What an interesting time to be in Malawi.  A lot has happened in the last week so it's hard to know where to start.  I don't really think I could ever fully capture all of the happenings from the last week in a quick little blog post; plus, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of my personal thoughts in such a public forum.... but I can't really NOT write anything about the events that have transpired in the last 7 days, so I'll try to stick to the facts.  After all, it's pretty big news.....

For those of you who haven't been following the news (and I'll admit, little old Malawi doesn't tend to make headlines), President Bingu wa Mutharika had a heart attack one week ago.  While it is almost certain he was dead by the time he got to the hospital, the government opted to fly his body to South Africa and wait until the following day to confirm his death.

There are people who are mourning the loss of our President, there are people who are excited, and there are people across the entire spectrum in between.  

According to the Constitution, the VP is to take over in a situation like this.  However, this was controversial since the VP, Joyce Banda, was expelled from the President's party (the DPP) in 2010.  She started her own party (the PP) and the President attempted to have her impeached.  It is believed that the delay in announcing the President's death was done to buy the DPP more time in trying to identify a way to maintain power.  However, the Malawi Defense Force made it very clear that they would do everything in their power to follow the Constitution.  In my humble opinion, this is a bold (and honorable) thing to do; if there was ever a time for someone to try to abuse the system and seize power, it would have been last weekend.  

However, this is Malawi - one of the most peaceful places on the face of the planet.  Joyce Banda (or JB, as she is now referred to in Malawi) was sworn in as the new President (the 4th president and the first female one) on Saturday.  In the days that followed, a number of changes took place:

• The Minister of Information was fired
• The Secretary for Treasury was fired
• The Police Inspector General was fired
• The Governor of the Reserve Bank was fired
• The Chief of the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation was fired
• Zambia donated 5m liters of fuel to Malawi (enough to last us 5-10 days, I think)
• The terrible potholes on a road in my neighborhood (where JB also lives) were filled
• A new VP was appointed
• A number of members of Parliament have defected from DPP and attempted to join JB's party, PP
• Leaders within the government are being shuffled around (including the Principal Secretary at one of the Ministries that we work very closely with)

To sum it up nicely, here's an article from the Economist:

JOYCE BANDA, Malawi's former vice-president, surely never imagined that she would make it to the top of her impoverished southern African country of 16m inhabitants, or that it would happen so soon. Expelled from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in 2010 following her condemnation of President Bingu wa Mutharika's adoption of his brother, Peter, as his heir apparent, she found herself out in the political cold, with her newly formed Peoples Party seemingly making little headway.

But two days after Mr Mutharika's unexpected death from a heart attack on April 8th, the life-long womens-right's advocate and former foreign minister was sworn in as Malawi's first female president. She has lost no time getting down to work. One of her first decisions was to sack her predecessor's hated chief of police, Peter Mukhito. Last June police killed 19 protestors during anti-government demonstrations. Mrs Banda says the late president unleashed a reign of terror against his critics, including arson attacks on their homes, death threats, physical assaults and summary arrests on trumped-up charges.

One of the victims of the state's brutality was Robert Chasowa, a pro-democracy student activist wanted by the police for publishing details of alleged corruption in high places. Mr Chasowa's body was found in the grounds of the University of Malawi's polytechnic campus last September. Police say he jumped to his death. They even produced his suicide note. But it bore no date or signature and got Mr Chasowa's father's name wrong. Apart from a gash to the head, the body showed no evidence of broken bones or ruptured organs. Mrs Banda has now ordered an official investigation.

She has also fired Mr Mutharika's unpopular information minister, Patricia Kaliati. Even before the official announcement of the president's death, Ms Kaliati went on television to inform the world that although Mrs Banda, as vice president, might be legally expected to be next in line, she was not eligible to assume the presidency since she had been chucked out of the ruling party. The country's constitutional lawyers thought otherwise, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's president, was soon congratulating her on becoming Africa's second currently serving female leader.

Mrs Banda must now to turn her attention to Malawi's failing economy. After Mr Mutharika was first elected in 2004, it flourished, with growth averaging more than 7% a year. Thanks to generous government subsidies for farm fertilisers, tobacco output, the economy's mainstay, soared and a former big food deficit was turned into a surplus. Child mortality, once among the worlds highest, was halved and the HIV/AIDS pandemic brought under control, All of that has helped Malawi to become one of just four of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries deemed likely to meet most of the UN's Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

But after Mr Mutharika's landslide election for a second five-year term in 2009, things began to go awry. With a thumping majority of over two-thirds in parliament, the once widely admired president began to display an increasingly dictatorial streak, postponing local government elections, enacting several unconstitutional laws restricting civil liberties, and intimidating his opponents.

Last June Western donors, who used to give Malawi around $800m a year in aid, suspended all budgetary support in protest against growing human-rights abuses and the government's failure to adhere to the IMF's good-governance conditions for access to its loans. Matters were made worse by a slump in the price of tobacco, the country's second-biggest source of foreign currency after aid, leading to severe shortages of petrol, certain food staples such as sugar and other imported goods. Mrs Banda, who has already promised to work to restore the rule of law and a respect for human rights, is hoping to woo donors back.

Malawians greeted the death of their president with open joy. So, more secretly, did most diplomats. Mrs Banda looks like she is off to a good start.

Like I said, it's an interesting time to be here in Malawi....