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| Malawi Confirms Death of President |
| Johannesburg, 06.04.2012 |
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| The government of Malawi confirmed on Saturday that the country’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika, has died, ending 24 hours of confusion and speculation about his condition.
But it made no mention of who would succeed him during a brief announcement on state television, increasing concerns that the former president’s supporters will seek to block the vice president, Joyce Banda, from ascending to the presidency as the Constitution requires.
At a news conference in the capital of Lilongwe on Saturday, Mrs. Banda appealed for calm and said she was taking charge of the government under the terms of the Constitution.
“As you can see, the Constitution prevails,” she said while declaring 10 days of mourning. Ambassadors, the army chief, civil society leaders and senior government officials have been streaming to her home in Lilongwe, perhaps indicating that she has already been acting as head of state.
Mrs. Banda was once an ally of Mr. Mutharika, but the two fell out over efforts to groom the president’s brother, Peter, as a successor. Mrs. Banda then formed her own political party. In remarks to the news media late Friday night, Malawi’s information minister, Patricia Kaliati, hinted that the president’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party, did not see Mrs. Banda as a legitimate successor since she was expelled from the governing party.
Ms. Kaliati said the fact that “the vice president started her own political party makes her ineligible to take over in such situation.”
Speculation about possible succession problems had grown since medical and government officials in Lilongwe said that Mr. Mutharika had died on Thursday after being stricken by a heart attack. The government did not announce the president’s death.
The United States on Friday expressed concern about the delay in a formal government announcement. The State Department issued a condolence statement that strongly suggested the president was dead but was carefully worded to avoid the appearance of confirming it, saying he had “reportedly passed away after a sudden illness.” The statement, by Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary for African affairs, also expressed anxiety about what would happen next.
“Malawi’s Constitution lays out a clear path for succession, and we expect it to be observed,” Mr. Carson said. “We are concerned about the delay in the transfer of power. We trust that the vice president who is next in line will be sworn in shortly.”
The president, a 78-year-old former World Bank economist, was elected in 2004. Credited with turning around the economy of a landlocked, perpetually poor southeast African nation by helping farmers produce more food, Mr. Mutharika was re-elected by a wide margin five years later.
But his popularity has faded in the face of declining demand for Malawi’s main cash crop, tobacco, and accusations that he had mishandled the economy. Rising fuel prices and shrinking foreign exchange reserves have compounded hardship for many of Malawi’s 15 million people, and Mr. Mutharika, who styled himself as the “economist in chief,” resisted advice from the International Monetary Fund to devalue the country’s currency.
As unrest grew last year, the police responded with force, firing on a demonstration and killing 19 people in July. The United States suspended a $350 million grant program in response, a major blow to a nation with an annual budget of $2 billion. Mr. Mutharika expelled the British ambassador after the leak of a cable that quoted him as saying that the president was “becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism.”
Human rights advocates and academics sounded alarms about authoritarian tendencies, which they compared with those of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the dictator who ruled the country for 30 years until the advent of multiparty elections in 1994.
Last month, Mr. Mutharika’s office released a lengthy directive banning the use of the term “the Big Kahuna” to refer to Mr. Mutharika, saying that “the laws of Malawi provide for the total respect and protection of the head of state.” The news media had widely used that term for him.
The statement also said the government was monitoring social-media Web sites for content that was “hostile and probably careless in demeaning the state president.”
The seriousness of Mr. Mutharika’s illness first became apparent when police officers were deployed in force across the capital on Thursday as he was rushed to a hospital. Army officers took up position around the vice president’s residence, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying.
Peter Jegwa Kumwenda contributed reporting from Lilongwe, Malawi.
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