PH
Malawians have been asking, to anyone who cares to know, about the whereabouts of their President Peter Mutharika.
President of the landlocked country since May 2014, Mutharika who spent time teaching law at Washington University, travelled to New York for the 71st General Assembly.
The meeting ended on September 26th and it was expected that every head of state would return to their homeland.
Mutharika did not and his absence has caused a buzz in Malawi.
With #BringbackMutharika, Malawians have posed questions, criticised government officials and gossiped about the man’s health.
The problem has largely been poor communication from government officials and local newspapers have lambasted the lack of coherent information.
Private newspaper Nyasa Times wrote of “their incredible inability to answer the many questions making rounds on tongues of the people of Malawi.”
And according to Dr Boni Dulani who teaches political science at the University of Malawi, they should be shown the door.
“Peter Mutharika should fire his PR team. They have embarrassed him & Malawi,” he argued on Thursday.
“Of course, a President practicing 1940 politics in 2016 is an embarrassment to himself.”
It could be that Mutharika’s own officials have been in the dark or that they were simply asked to keep silent about it.
‘MEETING PEOPLE’
On Thursday, Malawi government spokesman Malison Ndau told the BBC that Prof Mutharika was still meeting “a number of people one by one.”
The identity of these people or the venues of those meetings was not clarified.
Malawi’s State House had announced on Tuesday that the President will arrive next Sunday at 1pm.
“State House is informing the public that His Excellency Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika will on Sunday 16th October 2016 return to Malawi from the United States of America (USA) where he attended the 71st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and also attended to various government businesses.
“The President shall arrive at Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) at 1300hrs,” said Presidential Press Secretary Mgeme Kalilani in a Facebook post.
The choice of Sunday followed his failure to arrive last Saturday. And activists in Malawi have challenged the government officials to provide footage of those meetings if at all he was conducting the said businesses.
Without that, it has fueled a rumourr that the man, 76, is unwell and admitted to a hospital in the US.
RELATIVELY STABLE
With an estimated population of 16.8 million, Malawi has been relatively stable since 1991 when the one-party system was ended. It has held five presidential elections since.
Yet the current miscommunication depicts a country still with hangover of the past.
“We have a system whose one foot is in autocracy and another in democracy and therefore operating in such a dual conflicting lane highway makes this country, its leadership, its citizenry and its politics move in insane circles,” private newspaperNyasa Times wrote in a commentary.
Educated at Yale University, the Malawian lawyer rose to presidency after defeating incumbent Joyce Banda in May 2014.
Malawians may generally be justified to demand answers. Peter Mutharika’s elder brother Bingu wa Mutharika’s died in 2012 when he was sitting President.
He collapsed in his country, rushed to South Africa and was declared dead two days later.
The chaos surrounding his health and death were so poorly communicated that the announcement was made on the day Joyce Banda, who had been Bingu’s vice-president, was sworn in as the new President.
