The people’s manifesto for 2025 election
First, I am pleased to take over this noble task of being a columnist for ‘Accountability Matters’. It is hard to fill the shoes left by Mavuto Bamusi who for many months provided interesting and thought-proving articles on how to deepen accountability. I hope that you will find my writings equally helpful.
I begin with demands for accountability on the fast-approaching 2025 elections where Malawians will again choose a President. Party conventions are underway. This weekend is the turn of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after Malawi Congress Party (MCP) delivered a colourful event last weekend.
What is at stake, though, is something nobler than the personalities jostling to get into power and occupy the presidency. Malawians should be more concerned about the substance of the election, which is primarily to do with the promises surrounding economic development for our nation. It has become the norm that parties and their presidential candidates make easy promises and pronounce all manner of commitments that are soon broken, turned into lies, and concocted into undeliverables.
As 2025 elections fast approach, accountability on political promises matters. Malawians deserve better than empty promises. Citizens have the right to demand development so often packed in party manifestos.
For decades now, Malawi has failed to attain sustainable development. The economy continues to worsen as poverty has deepened. The state of infrastructure is pathetic while roads have degenerated into pothole-infested zones. As a matter of fact, the state of Malawi economy does not reflect well for a country that claims political independence, self-determination and sovereignty in 1964.
Economic independence appears a far-fetched dream, especially where exports are persistently too low compared with imports. Slow pace of diversification from agriculture into other economic sectors also compounds the problem while value-addition in agricultural productivity has been less than convincing.
The elections in 2025 should not be the time to massage personal egos of presidential candidates. It is the time to transform the country into a largely producing and exporting nation. The exercise should be a platform for competing ideas on how to implement Malawi 2063 national vision for nurturing a country that is inclusively wealthy and progressing towards becoming an upper middle-income economy.
Malawi is seating on a fiscal crisis where rising public expenditure cannot be adequately supported by domestic revenue sources. Malawians are saddled with heavy and multiple taxes as government takes desperate measures to generate revenue by milking a cow that is already too thin. On a related note, the 2025 elections are an opportunity for presidential candidates to showcase workable ideas on how to tame the ever-rising public debt, now at over K13 trillion.
The economy is bleeding as the cost of living continues to rise with prices of goods and services skyrocketing. Inflation has hit 33 percent, while food inflation is over 40 percent. The 44 percent devaluation simply added insult to injury on Malawi’s economic wound. Life has become tough and hard for ordinary Malawians. The 2025 elections should be an opportunity for presidential candidates to promise and deliver on strategies for ending hunger. Maize price is rising while 5.7 million Malawians are under threat of hunger this year.
Even more embarrassing is that the little money that remains in the fiscus is looted through all-manner of corruption, bribery, bad procurement deals, and construction of shoddy infrastructure projects.
The 2025 elections must deal with these malfeasances. It is a life-time democratic opportunity to have budgets that work for the people and do away with budgets that simply allocate billions of public monies into wastage, unnecessary presidential travel, and mere consumption, with little left for economic productivity. The 2025 elections are an opportunity for implementing developmental agenda for the people.
