Mutharika tipped to win
2004-05-18 18:22
Blantyre - A former economy minister hand-picked by President Bakili Muluzi is tipped to win the presidential election on Thursday in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries.
Muluzi is touting Bingu wa Mutharika as an "economic engineer" and has been energetically campaigning on his behalf, at times even hogging the limelight from his political protege.
Mutharika, 61, is widely seen as lacking charisma and has remained shy about stamping his authority, but he has boasted of having a "clean record" free from scandal or corruption, which is common among politicians in Malawi.
"My number one enemy is one thing: poverty," Mutharika said. "People are wallowing in poverty.
"I know where the problems are. We need to resuscitate the economy and bring development to rural areas."
Mutharika has pledged to bring economic stability to develop Malawi, one of the poorest countries on Earth.
The candidate is banking on the popularity of the retiring Muluzi, and a wide split in the opposition with four political heavyweights on the ballot, to win the vote when some 5.7 million Malawians cast their votes in the country's third multi-party elections since 1994.
"Mutharika is an eminent economist and the most qualified among all presidential candidates to turn around the economy," Muluzi said at a recent rally.
"Malawi now needs an economic engineer unlike in 1994 when the country needed a political engineer like me" Muluzi adds.
The elections in Malawi were initially scheduled for Tuesday but election officials agreed to postpone the vote until Thursday in line with a court ruling that ordered an inspection of voter registration lists.
Questions surfaced over the voter rolls when a review of the initial lists saw the number of registered voters drop by nearly one million - from 6.6 million voters to 5.7 million.
Muluzi has been criss-crossing the poor southern African nation, urging Malawians to support Mutharika, who only stepped into Muluzi's shoes last year when the bid by the retiring president to amend the constitution to allow him to stand for a third term was rejected by parliament.
Muluzi concedes that he has failed to turn around the economy, dependent on agriculture and battered over the years by inflation, huge local and foreign debts, high government borrowing and interest rates.