Firebrand Preacher on a Mission to Get Malawi's Aid Back

(Bloomberg) -- Firebrand preacher Lazarus Chakwera, Malawi’s main opposition leader and a front-runner in Tuesday’s presidential election, pledged to clean up the government and persuade international donors to lift a suspension on aid if he wins.

Chakwera said in an interview he plans to almost double the economic growth rate in one of the world’s poorest countries to at least 7% by expanding tourism, agriculture and mining. He will also seek to persuade the U.K. and other governments to resume aid. Donors that funded about 40% of the budget stopped payments after a 2013 scandal dubbed “Cashgate” saw almost a third of state funds allegedly embezzled.

Data showing the economy doing well is “superficial,” and there is no evidence that ordinary Malawians are benefiting, with businesses closing or scaling down and vast sums of money still going missing, he said.

“This economy needs resuscitation,” Chakwera, 64, said before a campaign rally in Lilongwe, the capital. “The first thing I need to do is to cultivate and create confidence in Malawian people that their taxes are not going to be stolen. The second thing I need to do is to bring back confidence from those partners that are helping us that their people’s taxes are not going to be stolen and misused.”

Rival Party

Chakwera, who heads the Malawi Congress Party, is in a tight race against incumbent President Peter Mutharika, 78, and his deputy Saulos Chilima, 46. In total, seven candidates are vying for the presidency and 6.59 million people have registered to vote in the southern African producer of burley tobacco and tea, widely known for the white-sand beaches of the expansive Lake Malawi.

Chilima quit the ruling Democratic Progressive Party last year in protest at what he said was rampant nepotism, cronyism and corruption. While he set up a rival party, the United Transformation Movement, Mutharika couldn’t fire him as vice president because he was directly elected.

The ruling party will try to rig the election by getting young people posing as police officers to control access to polling stations, Chilima told reporters in Lilongwe on Sunday. Nicholas Dausi, a ruling-party spokesman, denied the accusation.

Chakwera’s campaign received a boost last week, when Joyce Banda, who led Malawi from 2012 to 2014, quit the race and endorsed him. Mutharika won the first-past-the-post 2014 election with 1.9 million votes, while Chakwera got 1.46 million and Banda 1.06 million. The MCP draws most of its support from central Malawi, while Banda’s People’s Party is backed in the eastern region.

Chakwera’s other pledges include enhancing the independence of the anti-corruption bureau and the courts, and recouping stolen funds. He doesn’t see a role for Banda in his new administration but may deploy her as a goodwill ambassador.

Chilima, a former head of telecommunications company Airtel Malawi, has pledged to create 1 million jobs within a year, remove tax on water and electricity, and institute a 30-day amnesty for all people named in corruption cases to repay stolen money, failing which they will be jailed. He also wants to trim the size of the cabinet.

Mutharika, an international and constitutional law expert who studied at the University of London and Yale and taught at Rutgers University, has said he will put Malawi on the path to becoming a middle-income country by 2030. He’s targeting economic growth of 7% over each of the next five years and plans to spend $3.5 billion over the period on transport, energy and other infrastructure projects, while mobilizing a further $9 billion from private investors.

To contact the reporters on this story: Frank Jomo in Blantyre at fjomo@bloomberg.net;Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Gordon Bell, Alastair Reed

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