A former economy minister hand-picked by President Bakili Muluzi is tipped to win the presidential election on Thursday in Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries.
Muluzi is touting Bingu wa Mutharika as an ”economic engineer” and has been energetically campaigning on his behalf, at times even hogging the limelight from his political protege.
Mutharika (61) is widely seen as lacking charisma and has remained shy about stamping his authority, but he has boasted of having a ”clean record” free from scandal or corruption.
”My number one enemy is one thing: poverty,” said Mutharika in a recent interview. ”People are wallowing in poverty.
”I know where the problems are. We need to resuscitate the economy and bring development to rural areas.”
”I want to continue where Muluzi left. It’s like a relay race,” said Mutharika.
Mutharika has pledged to bring economic stability to develop Malawi, one of the poorest countries on Earth, with an annual per capita income of $210. Malawi ranks 163 out of 173 on the development scale of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The candidate is banking on the popularity of the retiring Muluzi, and a wide split in the opposition with four political heavyweights on the ballot, to win the vote when some 5,7-million Malawians cast their votes in the country’s third multi-party elections since 1994.
”Mutharika is an eminent economist and the most qualified among all presidential candidates to turn around the economy,” Muluzi said at a recent rally.
”Malawi now needs an economic engineer unlike in 1994 when the country needed a political engineer like me,” Muluzi adds.
The elections in Malawi were initially scheduled for Tuesday but election officials agreed to postpone the vote until Thursday in line with a court ruling that ordered an inspection of voter registration lists.
Questions surfaced over the voter rolls when a review of the initial lists saw the number of registered voters drop by nearly one million — from 6,6-million voters to 5,7-million.
Muluzi has been criss-crossing the poor southern African nation, urging Malawians to support Mutharika, who only stepped into Muluzi’s shoes last year when the bid by the retiring president to amend the constitution to allow him to stand for a third term was rejected by parliament.
Muluzi concedes that he has failed to turn around the economy, dependent on agriculture and battered over the years by inflation, huge local and foreign debts, high government borrowing and interest rates.
More than 60% of the 11-million people still live below the poverty line a decade after Muluzi swept to power in the country’s first multi-party elections, defeating self-proclaimed president-for-life Kamuzu Banda.
Born in the southern district of Thyolo, Mutharika was one of the founding members of the governing United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1993, then an underground movement pressing for human rights and democratic reforms after three decades of dictatorial rule by Banda.
Mutharika joined mainstream politics in 1999 when he formed his small Unity Party to contest the presidential race against Muluzi whose government he harshly criticised for ”lacking vision and a clear development policy”.
When he lost the elections to Muluzi, he dissolved his party and forced all his supporters to join the UDF.
Muluzi named Mutharika deputy governor of the central bank and last year he was appointed minister for economic planning and development.
In an upopular move, Muluzi handpicked Mutharika as the party’s presidential candidate, leading several key figures in the party to resign in protest.
An avid golfer, Mutharika is married to Ethel and has four children who all live in the United States. – Sapa-AFP