Malawi paying a price for the political choice we made in 1994 and 1999 electing Dr. Bakili Muluzi as President whose government recklessly borrowed from the domestic market, leaving us and our children with a huge debt burden to settle Honourable Folks, coming from a background of financial mediocrity that led to frequent closure of the donor aid tap during the Bakili Muluzi administration, the news that multilateral donors have now forgiven 90 percent of our USD2.9 billion external debt is quite a remarkable achievement by the Bingu wa Mutharika administration. Congratulations Mr. President and your government! I fully understand the excitement that led to the special presidential address to the nation through MBC and TVM on Friday night, hours after World Bank, IMF and Ministry of Finance announced the good news at a joint press conference in Blantyre. The debt relief means we won’t have to spend K15 billion annually servicing the external debt for the next 20 years. Quite a big save indeed and, used prudently, can make a difference in the social and economic spheres of life. I think I’m justified to assume that part of this money will be spent on drugs for our public hospitals so that they can stop being called “departure lounge” for the grave. Education, too, needs attention if our children are to avoid getting jobs fraudulently by using fake certificates as is already the case now. We do not only need chalk, books and other material resources but also well-qualified and properly-trained teachers to take over from the secondary school dropouts who are currently cheating pupils in the many unregulated public and private schools that came with multipartyism. In agriculture, there’s need for an urgent and serious campaign to wean villagers from rain-fed farming which makes us beg for food virtually annually when Lake Malawi and Shire River have fresh water flowing along the entire length of the country from Karonga to Nsanje the whole year round. Why not combine rain-fed and irrigation farming so that we can harvest three to four times as is already happening in the Manthimba Irrigation Scheme in Thyolo? How I wish the previous regime had controlled borrowing from the domestic market. We would’ve been saving much more than K15 billion annually! Unfortunately, domestic debts incurred by the previous regime to finance imprudent public spending are 100 percent the burden of yours and mine. Only that as we are struggling to pay, it’s better to realise we are paying a price for the political choice we made in 1994 and 1999. We elected Dr. Bakili Muluzi as President whose government recklessly borrowed from the domestic market, leaving us and our children with a huge debt burden to settle. I hope this should teach Malawians to be more critical in future elections. But while Mutharika seems to be making enviable strides on the economy, his political performance is a disaster. Media reports portray Mutharika as a person who is desperately using bare hands to prevent political turbulence from destroying his political pillar, DPP. As the Attorney General’s office is trying, through the courts, to save the political careers of MPs who defected to DPP from other parties represented in Parliament, Mutharika himself, has a tough time convincing the MPs and other MPs that his party is anything but quick sand. Reports indicate that this week he had an audience with some of the defectors who allegedly wanted to go back to the parties that sponsored them before the courts rule on section 65, trying to convince them that they are safe in DPP. As this is happening, the Hon. Joyce Banda has quit DPP as secretary general, former Attorney General Ralph Kasambara and regional governor for the South Samson Msosa have quit the party altogether. Have we seen the last of these resignations? Hard to tell. There is absolutely no basis for optimism, especially considering that DPP is predominantly made of “recycled” politicians who ditched their old parties not so much for the love of Mutharika (there was none in 1999) as it was for the money and opportunities contained in his presidential wallet. Mutharika is likely to be significantly detracted from the business of running government if he has to get involved in patching up holes that easily appear on the walls of his unstable DPP. The question is: is it worth it? To build DPP, Mutharika had to poach from MCP, UDF and other parties, thereby souring relations with leaders of these parties. They are so bitter that they don’t even attend public functions. Sometimes they vent their wrath on innocent Malawians like Tumalisye Ndovi who has been denied the opportunity to serve as director of the Anti Corruption Bureau for no clear reason. DPP has also been a cause of strained relations between Mutharika and the civil society. They don’t like the use of vehicles from statutory corporations for carrying DPP supporters to presidential functions. Yet, for all the trouble, DPP still remains too weak numerically in Parliament to enable the Mutharika administration to push important bills on its own. Am I the only one who sees the folly of depending in Parliament on the goodwill of the same opposition parties the government side poaches from in its desperate efforts to make DPP an effective ruling party?

Debt relief good, and Bakili Muluzi's UDF's failure to obtain it while sadly digging potholes for those coming behind them to crash into.

06/09/06—Admittedly, one of the best things that has happened to Malawi in the past 12 years is the writing off last week of 90 percent of the country’s foreign debt—over K406 billion—by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This sweet news would not have come at a better time than now for Malawi which badly needed this respite from donors.
As many commentators have said, no one can take away the credit from President Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration with Goodall Gondwe at the helm of the Finance Ministry for achieving this feat. This is especially so considering how remote debt cancellation looked only two years ago.
As we give credit to government for killing this beast and bringing its carcass home, mention should be made of the fact that the development has not just come like manna from heaven. Government was required to follow a strict fiscal regime to reach the completion point to qualify for debt relief. Debt cancellation has come through traversing a path the former government, for all its bragging about as a government that had economic development and the welfare of the people at heart as its number one agenda, not only failed to tread but also sadly dug potholes for those coming behind them to crash into.
One thing that was evident on the journey to debt relief was political will. Against all odds, government was not swayed by the need to be politically correct and kept faith with the strong desire to bail the country out of economic malaise. Honest Malawians will not be shy to admit that they never saw anything close to this—economic prudence—from the previous administration.
I am actually reminded about rude statements we usually heard like “I would rather be poor looking up than down, Ndimadya kwanu? We are a sovereign state so nobody should push us around”, etc. And if what someone has said that bad politics is barrier economics is anything to go by, then conversely, and for all its altercations with the opposition, the Mutharika government has been practising good politics. Which is why I believe even the opposition, well-known for their meanness in appreciating government’s work, have been generous in showering praises on government, a point I need not belabour.
With this good news, maybe it is about time we started afresh politically as well. We should do away with hate politics that has characterised most of the post-single party era. We should bid farewell to politics of vengeance. Let us avoid tit-for-tat. Such politics confirm people’s worst fears for hypocrisy which has come with government’s much-touted stand on zero-tolerance against corruption and graft in high offices. This is because tit-for-tat implies that government is selective in dealing with vices it is supposed to root out without looking at anybody’s face. An-eye-for-an-eye means that as long as you do not offend the powers that be you are safe even if you may have a cupboard full of skeletons.
Government could also do well to take debt cancellation as an opportunity to look back at the stumps it has crashed into along the way. The road has not been rosy. Government has made so many mistakes most of them with disastrous political and financial consequences. The most recent ones being the arrest of Vice President Cassim Chilumpha and 10 UDF cadres in connection with their alleged roles in Mutharika’s assassination plot. Government should ask itself if it is doing the right thing that nothing is happening on the assassination case six months after the arrests. Is the long delay in holding a judicial review justifiable?
Another grey area President Mutharika may do well to revisit is the hiring and firing of senior government officials which he has been doing willy-nilly. While it is his prerogative to do so, one wonders if he can justify such. Are all the people he has been firing unsuitable?
Lack of constitutionalism is another cancer in the Mutharika administration that needs to be removed. The calls for impeachment for violations of the Constitution may have been exaggerated but were not from without. And the fact that those peddling impeachment have not gone very far in materialising their objective does not absolve Mutharika of the blame. The President should have been in the forefront of defending rather breaching the supreme laws of the land. The list is long of things the President would have done better during the two years of his rule. But I think I have made my point.
As for the money freed by the cancellation of debt, the bottom line is that debt relief will be meaningless if the money freed from the development is not used to spur economic growth. With this money, let the masses see change in their lives.

A Monumental event in the history of Malawi as Malawi finally qualifies for debt relief


The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Friday announced a $2,9-billion debt-cancellation deal for Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries where 60% of the population lives on less than $1 per day.

The boards of the IMF and the World Bank -- two major sponsors of Malawi's economic reforms -- said this week that the country qualified for relief by completing the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative.

"This is a historic moment and very exciting news," Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe said. "It's a major milestone and a stepping stone to getting Malawi out of poverty."

Gondwe, himself a former IMF director, said Malawi will save about $110-million every year as a result of the debt relief, which wiped out more than 90% of Malawi's debt.

"It's one of the biggest things that can happen to a country," and should help boost Malawi's economic growth of 2% annually to a target of 6%, the minister said.

Malawi has won praise from international donors since President Bingu wa Mutharika took office in 2004. The former economist has tried to modernise the economy and clamped down on rampant corruption.

But the reforms have had a heavy political prize. Mutharika's party narrowly survived an impeachment attempt by former allies, who accused the president of abusing his office. His former vice-president stands accused of treason in allegedly plotting to kill him, and there is a seemingly endless stream of political crises and high-profile court cases.

The IMF's country director, Thomas Baunsgaard, warned that Malawi needs to "look carefully at borrowing to avoid accumulating debt and avoid getting into a similar debt situation".

"Debt relief alone is not enough ... Malawi needs to tackle corruption and strengthen public financial management systems," he said. "The cornerstone is to continue fighting corruption. The government should be vigilant in that area."

At least 60% of Malawi's population of 12-million live in poverty, on less than $1 a day. A high rate of HIV/Aids infection has compounded the country's problems. -- Sapa-AP