DEMOCRACY IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN

DEMOCRACY IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN
#By Joseph Kabuleta

What can Uganda learn from Malawi, a small landlocked country (like Uganda), with hardly any natural resources (unlike Uganda), with just over a third of Uganda’s population and just under half of our income per capita. It is one of a few countries that Uganda has the right to call small and poor without any irony.

They’ve also had a relic of a three-decade presidency (luckily theirs is in the past) and have had their fair share of botched elections and all that.
But the past one year has seen their democracy come of age. I will give you a brief run-down.
They had an election in May 2019 in which the incumbent, 79 year-old Peter Mutharika, won by a narrow margin with 39% of the vote while his closest challenger, Lazarus Chakwera, 65, got just over 35%.

 Lazarus (permit me to use his first name) went to court. Even as the litigation process went on --- it took three months --- there were protests all over the country. Court canceled the elections and ordered a new poll within 150 days. The incumbent appealed to higher courts but the ruling was upheld.

But brave Malawians didn’t stop at that. Through mass protests they demanded that the Electoral Commission boss steps aside, and she did.

But Mutharika, seeking a second term, turned his guns on the Chief Justice who had upheld the decision to annul the elections. He was placed on leave pending retirement with immediate effect. The notice read that he had accumulated more leave days than the remainder of his working days until his retirement due in December 2021. But the Judiciary fought back.
A statement signed by 60 law professors and academics from around the world said: “[The] actions constitute an unprecedented assault on judicial independence in Malawi” and the removal of the Chief Justice was an attempt “to frustrate elections by attacking the judiciary”.
The registrar of the supreme and high courts said that although a chief justice is appointed by the president and confirmed by the national assembly, all matters related to discipline and welfare fall within the “exclusive province” of the judiciary.

Just so you know, Peter Mutharika, the incumbent who has tried to use executive power to shut out the will of the people and the independence of the judiciary, is not a bush war soldier like….you know who, he is a former law professor at Washington university (where he spent 37 years) and an expert on international law and comparative constitutional law. He is the kind of man who you think would be a champion of democracy. His actions prove that theory can be so divorced from practice.

And so after a fight on all fronts; political, mass protests and the judiciary, the people of Malawi wake up this Monday morning, June 23, 2020, to go and vote for their next president, under a new and independent Electoral Commission and the brave judges who annulled last year’s poll are still on the bench. Campaigns have been open and massive (picture attached) and COVID-19 has not been used as an excuse to cheat an election. The people of that country have earned their right to choose a leader, they didn’t sit back and wish for it like most Ugandans.

Lazarus, the challenger, was proclaimed ‘dead’ after last year’s elections. But if he rises from the dead ---- like the Bible character from whom he got his name --- democracy in tiny Malawi will have risen with him.
Over to you Ugandans!!!