Ghosts, poverty dim glow of Malawi president – Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
Ghosts, poverty dim glow of Malawi president
CHILOBWA, Malawi (Reuters) – A year into his presidency and Malawi’s Bingu wa Mutharika is confronted by ghosts, poverty and possible impeachment.
Ghosts were reported to have temporarily ousted him from his $100 million (56.8 million pound) presidential mansion in the capital Lilongwe this year — which he has denied despite contrary statements from his religious advisers.
But a flesh and blood spectre from the past — in the form of his powerful predecessor Bakili Muluzi — is haunting him on the political front and undermining his efforts to rebuild the southern African state.
Wa Mutharika supporter Agrippa Tembo ruefully smiles when asked to summarise his hero’s achievements in the past year.
Still no donor funding to ease pressure on the state budget, no debt relief to help Malawi kick-start growth, no rains to ensure food supplies, and a raging HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“You may well think little of this is within the powers of my president, but my three children often remember that the man promised to tackle poverty and we are not seeing it vanish,” said Tembo, 42, a small tobacco and maize farmer near the small town of Chilobwa, north of Lilongwe.
