Ethnic consciousness dominates Malawi polls - Malawi - Elections '99 - Sustainable Democracy

BLANTYRE, 21 June 1999
Restive opposition supporters and multiple legal suits await Malawian politics in the aftermath of an election that has again unveiled deep ethnic-inclined vote patterns.

While anger and disbelief permeate the opposition camp, jubilation and relief punctuate the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) circles. President Bakili Muluzi was celebrating an early lead by Friday afternoon before
thousands of his followers in the commercial capital Blantyre.

Army, police and plain clothes security kept vigil, heading off an outbreak of violence Friday morning as tensions mounted ahead of the official results. Reports of unrest in parts of the northern region prompted Muluzi
to order police to arrest lawbreakers, reminding his opponents that he was again in charge.

The final tally had Muluzi winning with 2,4 million votes, his closest rival Gwanda Chakuamba of the opposition alliance constituting the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) standing at 2.1 million.

On the parliamentary front, the opposition had an edge with the MCP taking 66 seats, AFORD 29 and UDP 93 to an increased national assembly of 193 seats. This is according to official results released by the Electoral
Commission. One seat will be subject to by-elections because a candidate died before the 15 June polls.

As predicted by most analysts, the 5 million voters have maintained ethnic and regional loyalties exhibited in the country’s first multiparty polls of 1994, a factor that worries the younger generation of technocrats and
leaders.

"This pattern will not change until the current generation of leaders fades away. Regional voting does not always give you the best leader," said Law Society President Max Mbendera.

The phenomena was pronounced in the 1994 elections when Malawi moved from 31 years on one-party, strong-handed rule of late dictator Hastings Kamuzu
Banda, to a pluralist system of government. The UDF under Muluzi won the majority seats with 85 seats, MCP 56 and AFORD 36 in the 177 seat national assembly.

Fortified by sheer weight of numbers, Muluzi surged ahead of trade unionist Chakufwa Chihana of AFORD, the more internationally renowned figure. Muluzi hails from Malawi’s most populous region, the south, and drives his staying power mainly from the strong ethnic base.

The ruling United Democratic Front (UDF)’s stronghold is, hence, the southern region which has 4,6 million people while the Malawi Congress Party (MCP)- the biggest opposition party-commands the central region which has 4 million people. One million people are domiciled in the north, AFORD’s enclave.

On the five million registered voters, 2.4 million were in the south, 1,975,203 in the central and 678,906 in the northern regions.

Because this was an election largely dependent on the power of ethnic consciousness rather than issues, the coalition of the MCP and AFORD was the mathematical answer to dislodging UDF and Muluzi given the combined numerical superiority of north and central regions put together.

The MCP leader Chakuamba, who was contesting the presidency, took AFORD’s Chakufwa Chihana as a running mate, a strategic pairing that the opposition
expected would yield a superior tally of votes. The strategy appears to have fallen short of success and analysts point several factors.

Though a southerner and a former detainee under the one-party regime, Chakuamba’s biggest mistake seems to be his embrace of the MCP, a political
organization tainted by alleged human rights abuses under Banda.

Although MCP has increased its seats to 66 from 56 in 1994, benefiting from sections of the electorate disgruntled by the pains of structural adjustments, it was unable to cover enough ground to gain power.

Chihana’s AFORD slid from 36 seats in 1994 to 29 seats probably because of the what some local political observers see as an unhealthy linkage with the old order. The frailty of the opposition alliance leadership (Chihana viewed as favouring his more educated northerners and Chakuamba lacking charisma
and fore-sightedness) denied the pair a very real chance of taking the presidency.

Increased corruption, crime, a flagging economy with a gross domestic product per capita as low as USD170 and an inflation rate above 50 per cent, irks a lot of Malawians. But many credit Muluzi for his comparatively good human rights record and his high level of tolerance, particularly for a press corp obsessed with scandal and rave journalism.

"He is not a good administrator like Banda. But he does not hurt anybody.
People here think he is a good man despite his administrative short-comings", said a journalist working for an opposition newspaper.

But it is the regional vote that baffles commentators and that "accidentally" produces a proportionally balanced legislature despite Malawi using the first-past-the-post system, an electoral set-up that is often criticized for favouring single-party dominance.

Historians and political scientists hold that the people’s adherance to ethnic consciousness is rooted in the societal order schemed by the colonialist. Malawi, a former British colony independent in 1964, was divided into three regions-central, southern and northern-by the British.

As in much of Africa, the divisions were not entirely for administrative purposes but reflected different economic, social and intellectual experiences. The northerners, who got the benefit of the first Scottish
mission schools after 1878, enjoy a higher academic profile than the rest of the country.

Political analysts believe Banda’s government further accentuated ethnic fragmentation by trying to re-arrange the political order where the Yao speaking southerners (Muluzi’s ethnic group) and the Tumbuka-Henga speaking northerners were explicitly marginalised. There was, on the other hand, an affirmation of the special authenticity of the culture of the Chewa-speaking
people of the central region-Banda’s home area.

The coming of a new dawn, of a liberal society, kept people tethered to their parochial realms and has today yielded a result reflective of self-exclusive tendencies.

It will not be an easy second term for Muluzi given the parliamentary strengths of the opposition assuming of the course, that the MCP-AFORD alliance endures.

In his first term, he managed to pass legislation in parliament through careful negotiation with the opposition. This time, he must begin with the
more immediate headaches: petitions over disputed figures are anticipated-an attempt to restrain the announcement of final results were withdrawn by
opposition parties Friday. A fresh petition is expected.

And with the national budget scheduled for July, Muluzi will have to muster the skills of engagement with a bitter opposition to raise the country above the uncertainties that haunt it.
(SARDC)