Back Bencher

A taste of DPP whiplash!

Hon. Folks, the 2019 presidential race was for MCP to lose. That’s because with the troubled economy weighing down on its back, the ruling DPP has a cliff to scale just to retain the 36.4 percent of the votes it secured in 2014.

But that’s until October 2015 when MCP, which came second in the 2014 presidential election with 27.8 percent of the votes, didn’t have to do much to prove to the electorate it’s a better alternative to DPP.

The party that has for more than two decades tried this and that to win back the “unflinching support” of Malawian voters after losing it to UDF in 1994 to no avail, seemed poised for the presidency on a silver platter in 2019.

Reason, Cashgate. DPP and its offshoot, PP—the two major contenders (PP garnered 20.2 percent of the votes in 2014 presidential election)—are up to the neck stuck in Cashgate which, audit reports indicate, saw the draining of about K577 billion from public coffers between 2009 and 2014. Some of Cashgate convicts are on record as having claimed they were a mere conduit through which the leadership of the party in government was siphoning public funds for campaign purposes.

It’s a development that incensed donors so much so that they reacted by withdrawing budgetary support which made up 40 percent of the recurrent budget. They also tried hard to bypass government’s Account Number 1, channelling their development aid through non-governmental organisations, instead.

Cashgate and its aftermath rendered economic governance a nightmare for DPP; domestic revenue targets are often missed as the economy continues shrinking, forcing government to fund its scaled-down operations with borrowed funds, a burden our innocent children will inherit willy-nilly.

Chances are that when PwC does the forensic audit for 2009 to 2014 and, if the kwacha keeps on tripping while inflation and interest rates shoot over ceiling, bringing more and more misery to the electorate, DPP may not even be able to retain the 36 percent vote rate it scooped in 2009.

Likewise, PP, which apart from Cashgate is further weakened by the lengthy absence of its leader, Joyce Banda, who has been abroad for over a year following her loss of the presidency to her nemesis Peter Mutharika, and the subsequent resignation of all party vice presidents, may also have to sweat blood to retain, let alone build on, the 20 percent of the votes it banked in 2014.

That leaves only UDF which garnered 13.7 percent of the votes in the 2014 presidential election. Like MCP, UDF maybe Cashgate-free but it’s swallowed up by DPP. Its MPs opted to sit on the government side and its president is a minister in the Mutharika administration. It may, therefore, not be easy to extricate itself from government later and mount a convincing campaign for change.

Chances are that UDF may be lucky to attract more voters than was the case in 2014. Its fortunes may also depend on the outcome of the case in which its founding president, Bakili Muluzi, is accused of stashing K1.7 billion of public funds into his back pocket.

Should he be convicted, the impact of the damage may also leave a dent on UDF, the party he passed on to his own son, Atupele.

But DPP just won’t let MCP rise and shine on its back without kicking up a fuss. The fact that MCP vice-president Richard Msowoya is Speaker of Parliament with its president Lazarus Chakwera as Leader of Opposition, has been well capitalised on as a key arm of government where MCP leadership calls the shots.

Ordinarily it’s Parliament that provides checks and balances to the Executive but in Malawi, the opposite is true, at least for now. Government first accused Parliament of lacking in “frugality” in these hard economic times by spending K300 million on a Toyota Landcruiser V8 for the Speaker and three Toyota Prado VX for Chakwera and the two Deputy Speakers.

Later, another bombshell was unleashed, accusing Parliament of demanding extra funding to the tune of K1.2 billion which is way above what is provided for in the National Budget. To rub it in, the Executive also alleged that Parliamentary committees have squandered over K210 million yet no committee meeting took place. What next?

Suffice to say, some of the muddy splash may require expensive political detergent to clean up. Otherwise, MCP leadership is slowly beginning to appear just like the rest of the pack. This may not help garner more votes for DPP but it certainly raises the barrier of success for Chakwera.

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