Kondwani Munthali -Malawi

Apart from Universal subisdy and a bit about food security, MCP/UDF presidential candidate John Tembo was at his best, smiling and working up the crowds with attacks on Bingu. Very unusual for JZU who rarely attacks a personality but prefers issues. But there was a justified reason, you could see it all on the faces of Bakili Muluzi and Tembo, they had made it. I had travelled around Kasungu and Mchinji on Sunday morning to conduct a Nation opinion poll which will be published later in the week, I met hundreds of people until 1pm trying to get into public transport for the rally. DPP during its manifesto launch has the luck of having own transport throughout the day, the opposition supporters went there on their own. The crowd at Masintha would remind Malawians in Lilongwe the time Chakufwa Chihana had just come out of jail after the referendum in 1993, it was as Kamuzu would say "people, people, people." At Masintha the ground was filled to its capacity, boozers found and ex...

I want to apologise to those that sent me several emails, Gerlad in Dhaka and many of you who were asking me where the hell am I on my blog. My last entry was the 100th, meaning I have not been really doing a good job. But from May 1, 2009 it will be daily reporting on elections as I will only have to write 17 articles. You see, I have had fun in the last week, predicting the MCP/UDF coalition, predicting again correctly that Gwanda Chakuamba will be the biggest loser to be caught up in his own games of changing parties and finally taking parties on their own promises. Well President Bingu wa Mutharika wants more powers to appoint his own Vice President, according to article one of the DPP manifesto, which would surely delight his critics who believe he wants to be a dictator. Well everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I think this is followed in many countries so some fears might be unfounded. For JZU Tembo, his manifesto is well written, and his record as a Manager is quite exce...

Aleke Kadonaphani Banda has voted in Nkhatabay South at Tukumbo more than once. But come last week, he had his shock of life, his name was missing from the voters roll. The story is the same of thousands of Malawians whose name are not in the official register of the elections. Lucky enough most of them have their voters cards that it will be difficult to accuse them of being cheats. The issue of the missing names on the voters roll has just further lowered the morale in an election which has no fun. There is very little excitement and as I said not even posters in town to indicate the season. I travelled to Chilinde area in the Capital, someone had put an effort and put up flags, while so far the real talk on the campaign has been the K100 million convoy President Bingu wa Mutharika is using. Yes you can add K36 million coach paradiso, K40 million six Hummer H3 and over 20 nissan one tonne pick ups with each costing around K2 million duty free. Apart from the convoy, there are two fee...