The Public Affairs Committee (PAC), which has strong backing from Christian and Muslim groups, has warned the Malawian president that if he signs the law into force, the country will start sliding back to dictatorship such as existed under President Kamazu Banda for decades until the early 1990s.
Earlier in December, the faith-based organization said that in passing the bill, Malawi’s parliament showed it is bent on pleasing the president, and not the people who voted for them.
“If the president goes ahead and assents to the bill, it means that he is a leader who does not want to listen to his people. He would be making a dictator of himself,” PAC spokesperson Maurice Munthali told Malawi’s Nation newspaper on December 5, warning that the country would be reverting to a “one-party regime.”
The Malawi constitution stipulates that local government elections shall be held in May one year after national general elections. The amended bill however reads: “The local government elections shall take place after five years on a date to be determined by the president in consultation with the Electoral Commission.”
Osiah Mukumbwa of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, Livingstonia Synod, said he agreed with the PAC’s Munthali that the bill marks a return to a one-party system of government.
Mukumbwa was speaking at a meeting organized by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in the northwestern district of Chitipa. He called on the government to consult widely before it acts to change the existing law.
After general elections in May, Malawi was supposed to hold local government elections a year later in 2010. However government officials said that due to financial constraints those elections could not be held. The country has not conducted local government polls since 1996.
PAC is an umbrella of groups such as the Muslim Association of Malawi, the Quadria Muslim Association of Malawi, the Malawi Council of Churches, the Evangelical Association of Malawi, and the Episcopal Conference of Malawi, which represents Roman Catholic bishops.
