Malawi Votes!

My travels up through Malawi happen to have corresponded with the 2009 National Malawi Elections so they were some pretty exciting times. I’ve come to the conclusion that Malawians appreciate their democracy more than we do in Canada. It’s not as strong as ours, lacking things like good media scrutiny, but they are all very engaged in the process they have.

I was in Mzuzu for election day and visited one of the polling stations. You can see above how ridiculously busy it was. Those line-ups were taking 20 minutes to get through! I bet people would turn away from lines like that at a voting station in Canada.

Annette is posing there with a local proudly displaying the black ink left on his finger from casting a presidential vote.

Another interesting phenomena was the massive and wholehearted support I saw for presidential candidates and MP candidates. Well actually it was only one presidential candidate I saw people supporting – perhaps because I was in the northern region. Truthfully I’m not even sure who the contender was! Everywhere I looked I saw posters for Bingu wa Mutharika, current president and 2009 candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In development people sometimes speak of challenges with rural implementation and distribution, however when it comes to elections there was clearly no trouble getting out endless Bingu shirts, hats, notebooks, buttons and posters all across Malawi. I don’t quite understand the craze and celebrity-like status of Bingu but it seems he is good at delivering very tangible returns to the public, connecting them with his face and using that for his political marketing. Farmers I spoke with here in Misuku really latched onto the subsidized fertilizer he had been able to provide them.

Finally, I had a cool experience in the evening just as we were driving through the last hills to get to Misuku. The sun had just finished setting and the hills were peaceful. The moonlight occasionally caught tin-roofs of huts along the roadside and cooking fires dotted the slopes. Then a strange ruckus started to build ahead of us and we rounded a corner to find a veritable street party in our way. Fires were burning, music was playing, women and men alike were dancing away, hooting and hollering. I was happy to see some fun but had no concept of the meaning and didn’t really question it. Moses, the driver clued me in. It was now two days after the election, just about sufficient time to have counted the votes and announce the results of the MP elections at least. Apparently these folks were rather pleased that their candidate had won! Again, would you ever see anything of the like in Canada?

PS. Bingu of course eventually won the presidency for a second term. Everything went without a hitch as far as I can tell and Malawi completed a successful and peaceful election.