FELIX MPONDA, Blanytre | Friday 6.30pm
Malawi’s President Bakili Muluzi, who ousted dictator Kamuzu Banda in 1994, has won re-election for a second and final five-year term, the electoral commission announced Friday.
But a slender victory margin will send a warning to the man who ousted dictator Kamuzu Banda five years ago that anger over economic misery is growing. State radio reported that Muluzi had won 2,44-million votes against 2,10-million Gwanda Chakuamba, joint candidate for the late Banda’s Malawi Congress Partyand the Alliance for Democracy.
Electoral commission official Assani Fahad confirmed that Muluzi had won, but said official results would not be released until later on Friday. Muluzi swept to power in 1994 on a wave of hope for a better life in this southern African nation of 11 million people after 30 years of iron-fisted rule by the autocratic Banda.
A large, jovial man, he is widely credited with vastly improving human rights, but his people remain among the poorest in the world. Chakuamba led a resurgent MCP assault on Muluzi’s record, charging that corruption and economic mismanagement had left many Malawians eating animal feed rather than maize.
In parliamentary polls run concurrently with the presidential vote, Muluzi’s United Democratic Front was reported by state radio to have won 94 of 193 parliamentary seats, four short of a simple majority. The MCP took 63 seats, and its electoral ally, AFORD won 31, giving them a combined total of 94, the same as the UDF.
Four seats went to independents, while a by-election will be held for the final constituency because an opposition candidate died shortly before the election. The results confirmed the regional voting trend set in the 1994 poll, with the UDF winning the densely-populated south, the MCP strong in the centre and all AFORD’s seats coming from the rugged and mountainous north.– AFP