Malawi, Mutharika president for second term

Bingu Wa Mutharika was sworn in for a second term as Malawi’s President and vowed to fight corruption and expand a subsidy program that has turned the southern African nation from an aid recipient to a food exporter.

“We will have a bumper, bumper harvest this year because of our subsidy program which will be extended to farming equipment,” Mutharika, 75, said at his inauguration in the commercial capital, Blantyre. “We will continue our program of feeding all Malawians.” Mutharika won the May 19 election for president over his main challenger, John Tembo, while his Democratic Progressive Party had a commanding lead in the races for the 192 contested seats in parliament.
Mutharika campaigned on his record of keeping the southern African nation’s economic growth rate at almost 7 percent and ending years of intermittent food shortages. Tembo, who has refused to accept the defeat, said his Malawi Congress Party would challenge the results peacefully in the courts.
Election monitors from the European Union and the Commonwealth of former U.K. colonies said yesterday that the domination of state-owned media by Mutharika’s party distorted the election campaign in the president’s favor.
Mutharika thanked former president Bakili Muluzi, who backed Tembo in the race, for attending the inauguration, the first time he has showed up at a government function in five years.
“This is the way things should go,” Mutharika said. “We ought to work together for the good of the nation. Dialogue and reconciliation will heal our nation.” With votes for 144 parliamentary seats counted, the DPP has won 87 to 17 for Tembo’s MCP and 14 for Muluzi’s United Democratic Front, state television reported. Independent candidates captured 24 seats, while two went to smaller parties, it said.
Under Mutharika, a U.S.-trained economist, growth in the country of 14.3 million people averaged 6.6 percent during the past five years. Good weather and subsidies for poor farmers helped to turn Malawi from a regular recipient of aid into an exporter of food.
Eighty-five percent of the people in the landlocked nation live in rural areas.
“In a country where most of the population is rural, it was about getting fertilizer to grow crops and feeding families,” said Rafik Hajat, the director of a Malawian lobby group, the Institute for Policy Interaction in Blantyre.