Intrigue, power grabs beset Malawi politics

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

BLANTYRE, Malawi -- It started, as most stories about revenge and bitterness and assas- sination attempts do, with a breakup.xxxxxx First, Malawi's Pres- ident Bingu wa Muth-arika ditched the party that helped elect him a year into his five-year mandate.

Then he formed his own rival party and went on an anti-corruption crusade targeting his old political cronies, including a former president.

Vice President Cassim Chilumpha was arrested for purportedly absconding with $1.3 million, then let off when the courts made the curious decision that he couldn't be arrested while in office.

So Mr. Mutharika fired him.

Mr. Chilumpha shot back by organizing an impeachment campaign.

When the courts saved Mr. Chilumpha a second time, Mr. Mutharika borrowed a page from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's book -- not exactly a best-seller on the democracy and good-governance charts -- and had the vice president arrested and charged with treason for a purported plot to assassinate the president.

It was claimed Mr. Chilumpha hired South African mercenaries to assassinate the president while he was on a publicity tour inspecting this year's tobacco crops.

In apparent homage to Mr. Mugabe, Mr. Mutharika had the arrest carried out while the Zimbabwean leader was in Malawi on a controversial state visit.

In the tennis game that has become Malawian politics, it seemed the president had just scored a rather dirty match point.

"There is more than meets the eye," says Boniface Dulani, a political-science lecturer at Chancellor College, Malawi's main university. "There is more than just treason; it's politics as well. We can only hope the courts get to the bottom of this."