May 21-27
Hello everyone!
I think it’s fair to say that I live in a bit of a bubble
here in Malawi. I see things on the way to work, I hear about things from
friends and colleagues, but I’m not often explicitly exposed to or affected by
what goes on in the country. Unless, of course, it’s something so big that it
is very much in your face on a daily basis.
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| Logo in the newspaper |
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| A banner campaigning for the current President, Peter Arthur Mutharika |
A general election can be classed as one of those things.
We’ve known for a while that ‘tripartite’ elections – for president, parliament
and local councils – were taking place on Tuesday, 21st May, 2019. As
the calendar year has progressed, more signs of politicisation were becoming
evident.
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| Flags for the 'orange' People's Party near Zomba |
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| A march for the 'red' UTM through Area 2 in Lilongwe, blaring very loud music through poor quality speakers |
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| The man on the left of this picture sold me my car - he was also accused of selling cars with stolen engines. Yet was running for local council... |
Maybe there’s a bit of naivety on my part. I don’t speak
Chichewa; I don’t know what they’re
singing. It just seemed to me that there wasn’t the apathy and general
despondence which I associate with political campaigning in the UK.
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| Placards for individual campaigners started springing up everywhere, like they do in the UK. |
A commonly held view, reinforced by issues such as Cashgate,
is that corruption is rife in the political class of Malawi. The election
became interesting last year when the Vice-President – someone in government –
announced he was going to run for President on a campaign of anti-corruption.
Against the government which he was part of…
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| Saulous Chilima left the incumbent DPP to set up his new UTM group |
He made a new party: the United Transformation Movement
(UTM). They quickly became popular, with many people I spoke to saying they
liked the leader, Saulos Chilima. Outlandish statements, such as creating 1
million jobs in his first year without offering any examples, probably gained
traction with a lot of younger voters.
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| A UTM parliamentary candidate |
The three main candidates all made some form of pledge to
reduce corruption. This stain on democracy can take many forms, including in
the actual voting process. In the week leading up to the election day, concerns
were being raised on many sides about the ballot papers. I found it fascinating
that they get flown in from the United Arab Emirates.
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| At this point, no ballot papers had any Tippex on them - that's important for later... |
Common consensus was that it would be a tight race between
the current President Mutharika (from the Democratic Progressive Party, DPP),
the current Vice-President Chilima (UTM) and the leader of the Malawi Congress
Party (MCP), Lazarus Chakwera. In terms of names, he surely would be the best
choice. Imagine the leader of your country being called Lazarus.
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| Lazarus leads the MCP, which was the only legal political party in Malawi until 1993. |
Election Day seemed to pass peacefully: I wasn’t really
aware as I was still on the mend from malaria at that point, but our school was
closed as a precaution. Each region voted and then ‘canned’ their votes, which
had special codes on them. These would then be sent to the big conference hall
in Blantyre to be tallied.
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| Still recovering from malaria, this is how I spent much of my day |
I may have glossed over an important point, there. At this point, there was no indication that there would be any violence due to the election. Malawi has held keenly-contested elections before without any overspill of emotions. However, one or two incidents and comments had suggested that people needed to be vigilant.
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| An article from February - the wording makes this seem like a positive thing... |
In most elections around the world, you would like to think
that, for transparency reasons and for the state of mind of the country, results
would be announced quite soon after polling. Not Malawi. The constitution
allows the electoral commission (MEC) to take up to 8 – EIGHT – days to
announce the winner. Turns out they needed almost all of that time…
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| Jane Ansah is the spokesperson for the MEC |
It’s over the next few days when it became clear how much of
a bubble some of us live in here. We don’t have a TV so don’t watch national
news. We don’t have a radio so don’t hear local news. Even online media seemed
slow to react – or failed to react – to latest updates. The MEC also seemed
content to drip-feed updates, once or twice a day, to the public.
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| The first release of some results had the MCP ahead |
On Wednesday, Lazarus was leading with about 35% of votes
counted. On Thursday, Mutharika was leading with about 75% of votes counted.
According to my teaching assistant, the final result was due to be announced on
Thursday evening. The nation held its breath…and nothing happened. The fact
that it had been delayed hadn’t even been mentioned on the evening news.
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| The longer the wait, the more discontent there was likely to be... |
Needless to say, tension was building. We had school on
Friday (I managed to squeeze in my assembly that had been previously postponed
due to my malaria issues) but I was told towards the end of the day that the UN
building in the city had been evacuated, and that the MCP had declared
themselves winners. That’s MCP, led by Lazarus…who was behind on the previous count. They had a little party but were then
slapped down by the electoral commission, who told them – and the rest of the
country – to be patient.
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| MCP are popular in Lilongwe, whereas the DPP are popular in Blantyre |
Over the weekend, rumours started swirling that the DPP –
the current party in power – had retained the presidency. Lots of other rumours
started to emerge about ‘issues’ with the votes. The MCP – remember they’re the
ones who had briefly decided they had won – weren’t happy so decided to take
the legal route. They secured an injunction, stopping the MEC from announcing a
winner until all irregularities were sorted.
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| Saturday's newspaper headline |
Then silence. Well, from our bubble at least. We got told
that school would be closed on the Monday as a precaution. Occasional pictures
and messages were passed on through WhatsApp about what was happening elsewhere
but any issues seemed fairly isolated.
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| A protest roadblock |
From what I understand (probably incorrectly), the MEC
managed to overturn the court order on Monday afternoon. At about 6pm on Monday
evening, almost a full week after voting started, the results were announced.
Mutharika had retained the presidency, the DPP had won lots of seats in
parliament, and the MCP were not happy. At all.
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| The announcement on Monday evening |
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| A picture from the newspaper on Tuesday, showing happy DPP supporters |
Once again, school was shut on Tuesday. Due to public
holidays and election concerns, we have had five days when school has been
closed in the past month. Add my malaria on top of that and I feel like I have
hardly been at work since the Easter break. Still, it made some happy…
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| Mini was thrilled that we were home |
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| We had lots of time to do admin such as writing reports |
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| Newspaper headline from the day after the announcement |
As the afternoon progressed, we started hearing reports of
marches and protests, with rumours that the police needed to use tear gas to
disperse people.
Things seem to have died down yet. Mutharika, who some are
now dubbing the winner of the Tippex Election, was sworn in soon after the announcement, and
he now has five more years in which to improve Malawi. Many Malawians I speak to are disillusioned about it. The election which took an eternity to complete is not finished in the eyes of many.
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| One example of the 'Tippex' issue |
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| A close race which we may not have heard the last of |
Love you all,
Matt