AFRICANEWS

Malawi

Another merry-go-round by Muluzi?

Politics

Newly re-elected President Bakili Muluzi is promising Malawians a better life. But few are convinced as living standards in the country continue to fall and corruption in government circles goes on.

On June 21, during the swearing in ceremony for his second term Malawi's President Bakili Muluzi said: "As your President, I will do everything in my power that you receive my full attention and protection. We are a poor nation, but together we are determined to do something. We shall fight crime and protect the weak everywhere." Part of the wars that Muluzi vowed to start immediately was one against corruption. He said: "We shall fight corruption wherever it shows its grey hair because corruption is an evil." However, the man whose victory precipitated post-poll political and religious animosity didn't elaborate how he will win the war nor how to solve the country's problems. Instead he gave a blurred understanding of issues and his vow to stamp out graft through a newly established Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). Many are not impressed and they see his latest outing as yet another merry-go round.

Arnold Munthali, a 23-year-old fourth year student at Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi says: " We have the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) but it appears it is only in name." "The ACB" he adds, " is now is a farce. It is an institution that has been created not due to necessity but convenience because we would like to portray an image that we are concerned about corruption. But are we really concerned? The ACB which is supposed to be anti-corrupt is becoming corrupt."

Such pessimism is rampant in the country and it has seen an independent organisation the Consumers Association of Malawi (CAMA) alarmed at the level of corruption suggest plans to engage prosecutors to handle corruption cases besides the ACB. According to CAMA's Executive Director John Kapito, "Corrupt practices are destroying the fibres of our economic base. At the end, the losers are ordinary people." However even with such determination few are convinced that CAMA's efforts will lead to anywhere in a country where the evil has penetrated in every sector of the Malawian society. The country is among the seven African countries on a pilot phase of the World Bank's integrated strategy to fight corruption, which the Bank says, damages developing countries' young democracies. It is also rated 12th among 18 African countries surveyed on corruption.

But corruption is not the only issue that Muluzi faces in what has been billed as his last term in office. The effects of the International Monetary Fund's imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and attendant poverty continue to hurt large sections of the citizenry. At the time Malawi started implementing SAPs in 1981 the objective was to equip the country respond to external shocks. However this seems not to have come to pass and eighteen years later there has been no significant change in the structure of the economy.

Instead all that been seen during this period was the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Loan schemes established to help the poor were seen to be discriminatory. Worse still, the country has been implementing policies that have been supporting consumption and not production despite pledges by both Muluzi and his Finance Minister Dr. Cassim Chilumpha that his United Democratic Front (UDF) government would institute fiscal discipline. This failure of SAPs has created doubts on the seriousness of the government making Vincent Wandale, a student at the Bunda school of Agriculture say: " It appears the government has no priorities of its own. I feel that the government is prioritising on dictated issues. "

However Malawi cannot set its own priorities if it is to pay its burdening external debt that currently stands at US$2.6 billion. The debt has imprisoned the country in the IMF debtors jail and any hope for the country might, analysts say lies in the Jubilee 2000 campaign. That is if the clamour prevails. For many Malawians hope evaporated last August when prices of fuel went up by 60 percent to be followed by those of transport and food. Since then Malawians whose per capita income is US$ 220, less than half the Sub Sahara average, have been plugged into another economic crisis. Taking a bus to and from work places costs more than what most workers earn and lunch hour is no longer for eating but for praying or playing games.

On average, civil servants earn less than US$50 a month and this is not enough to pay rent, transport, food and other basic needs. Most of the people are surviving on a one meal a day, usually of the staple maize-meal dough, Nsima, and boiled beans. With such factors there is no possibility of narrowing down the country's income inequality gap which the World Bank says is the highest in Africa. Its life expectancy is 43 years, nine years less than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus even with Muluzi chanting that he has got his priorities right this time some of his subjects like poultry farmers are mad. The country's now liberalised economy has seen the flooding of chickens from neighbouring Zimbabwe killing the local industry.

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