No incident as Mzuzu welcomes Peter
There was calm and sporadic excitement in Mzuzu as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Peter Mutharika succeeded People’s Party (PP) founder, President Joyce Banda on Saturday.
Despite the anxiety and suspense that characterised the long wait for electoral results announced around 11pm on Friday, peace has been widespread in the Northern Region and its hub, Mzuzu, since Malawians went to the polls on May 20 last month.
The mood was slightly tense on Friday around 6pm when a truckload of armed police officers asked vendors and customers to leave the city’s marketplace and streets for easy enforcement of law and order when the electoral commission would finally announce the electoral results.
The operation, which assistant police public relations officer in the North Paul Tembo termed a normal public order intervention in readiness for the eagerly-awaited poll outcome, was met with pockets of murmurings, bickering and resistance as the trading population found it needless to be evacuated after keeping calm throughout the past 10 days.Notwithstanding the calm, shop owners left nothing to chance and the majority of them hired gun-brandishing police mobile service officers to watch over their businesses from violent conducts, something some aptly termed a lesson from July 20 2011 nationwide protests in which vandals looted and burnt goods worth millions of kwacha.
In drinking places, most revellers turned down dance music and switched their eyes to television sets to follow the landmark ruling of High Court Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda and the long anticipated announcement of official results by the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chaiperson Justice Maxon Mbendera, SC, around 11pm.
On Saturday, all was normal as President Mutharika and his Number Two Saulos Chilima took oaths of office, ending what Mutharika termed “a long journey” before imploring losing candidates to work together with him to revamp the country which is “on the verge of collapsing”.
Around 9am, before the swearing-in ceremony at the High Court in Blantyre, DPP zealots in Mzuzu took to the streets with a hooting 10-piece motorcade preceded by a flurry of bell-ringing bicycle taxis, chanting “DPP Boma” from the city centre to Luwinga.
Ironically, the jubilant hooting, screaming and bell-ringing had given way to pin-drop silence around 11am when the brother of former president, the late Bingu wa Mutharika who died in office on April 5 2012, vowed to fight his way to State House.
Like at the heart of the city, the townships of Chibanja, Salisbury Line, Chibavi, Chiputula, Mzilawayingwe and Zolozolo were sparsely dotted with groups of anxious bystanders following the proceedings on radio and television at shop verandas and drinking joints.
Locals say the tempo and reception accorded to Mutharika’s swearing-in ceremony was vehemently dwarfed by the anxiety that welcomed his predecessor Joyce Banda’s promotion to presidency on April 7 two years ago.
This is not unusual in a six-district region where the new ruling party narrowly won Chitipa and the island district of Likoma, trailing on the third place in the remaining four—Rumphi, Mzimba, Nkhata Bay and Karonga—where Banda’s PP was topping the race for presidency ahead of Malawi Congress Party’s Reverend Lazarus Chakwera.
Yet random interviews show the region feels the newly-elected President has the immediate task to abolish the quota system which they consider discriminatory against them and to show remorse and console families of 20 people who died during the 2011 uprising against his brother’s draconian economic and political governance.
“Recently, we heard outgoing Vice-President Khumbo Kachali saying he endorsed Peter as the only candidate who can abolish the quota system of selecting students to public universities. Having nodded and spoken in agreement to Kachali’s statement, we would be glad to see the new President doing as he promised because it is discrimination when our bright children are being denied places in higher learning institutions due to bad policies such as quota,” said Anock Munthali at Mzuzu Central Market.
The feeling is best exemplified by the indignation of the CCAP Synod of Livingstonia which has erected a signpost at the entrance to its headquarters stating that their stand remains “a strong NO” to quota system.
In Zolozolo, where victims of July 20 protests are buried, Jonathan Mkandawire, 44, said: “It is an insult that up to now Mutharika has not come to apologise, console bereaved families and withdraw his brother’s statement that our people died in vain.”
Mutharika rises to power at a time a feeling is widespread that he will replicate the tyrannical and arrogant governance that marked the ending of his brother’s rule, a call to a greater challenge to prove the critics wrong.
