Muluzi's return to Malawi brave, worthwhile

Lesser mortals would be inhibited from returning to Malawi after the dictator in power there, Bingu wa Mutharikia, had stated publicly that they would be arrested on arrival.  Apparently not former president Dr. Bakili Muluzi, Chairman of the opposition United Democratic Front [UDF] party, and that party's presidential candidate in next year's elections.  He is scheduled to retrn to Malawi this Sunday, following a private visit to the United Kingdom.
 
Dictator President Bingu wa Mutharika has said on a few occasions while Muluzi has been away that Muluzi ought to face " a stiff punishment" for allegedly plotting to overthrow Mutharika.  Immediately after making such a threat, Mutharika went ahead and arrested several UDF officials and military officers on the accusation that they plotted to commit the treasonous offence of unlawfully and prematurely putting Mutharika's dictatorship out to pasture.
 
Those arrested have since been granted bail, itself practically unheard of following a Treason-related arrest - thus already showing what the courts think of what was supposed to pass as evidence of a coup plot.  In fact, Mutharika's own deputy, Vice President Cassim Chilumpha, remains under house arrest following his own case in which Mutharika accuses him of plotting to kill Mutharika.
 
Dr. Bakili Muluzi's decision to return to Malawi despite the threat of his arrest is positive for the struggle to restore democracy and rule of law to Malawi which have both been eroded grievously during Mutharika's presidency [2004 - ].  As Mutharikia works hard to retrogress Malawi towards one-party status [witness his attempts to incapacitate opposition parties through "poaching" and capricious proroguing of Parliament when it is about to rule against his poaching; and his badgering of the judiciary], an effective antidote is the courage of opposition leaders such as Bakili Muluzi to call the dictator's bluff.
 
Dictatorships all over the globe thrive on intimidation. The people, particularly those in opposition aid and abet dictatorship when they allow themselves to be intimidated.  Opposition politicians, the judiciary and civil society organizations which bend to the will of the dictator; and who show timidity in the face of threats of unlawful arrests, only work, by so doing, to enable the flourishing of dictatorship.
 
Why should free citizens be afraid to return to their own homelands whose citizenship they have never renounced; countries they love with all their being and identity?  Would that be simply out of fear of the threats of a morally bankrupt dictatorship, to whom the words "rule of law" mean "my way or the highway"?  Thank God for people like Bakili Muluzi who will show, by his return to Malawi this Sunday, that the emperor has no clothes.
 
By his paranoid and predatory political behaviour Mutharika has shown, during four years of presidency, that he is psychologically unfit to be president of a nation. He has made numerous accusations of Treason against unlikely people, none of whom has ever been convicted, and is often willing to ignore court orders and parliamentary resolutions just to shore up his presidency; one built on the foundations of treachery, deceit and betrayal.
 
Mutharika was elected in  May 2004 on the platform of the UDF.  Just after Christams that year, he accused three senior UDF officials of trying to kill him with guns at his Sanjika Palace.  The matter never made it to trial, although one such accused, Harry Thomson, later received compensation from government for defamation.  Another, Roy Commsy, was later parachuted into cabinet to sit beside the very president whom he had allegedly been planning to dispatch to an early rendezvous with his Maker.

In January 2005, Mutharika defected from his UDF and formed his own Democratic Progressive Party, DPP.  Against the dictates of Section 65 of the Constitution, he encouraged members of opposition parties to "cross the floor" of Parliament and join his bloc without first seeking a fresh mandate from their electors.  He has since expended all the efforts his presidency can muster to prevent the Speaker of Parliament from invoking S. 65, which would result in his losing at least forty of his "poached" legislators, derisively called "political prostitutes" in Malawi.  This would spell the end of the DPP in Parliament as it has only five of of its own legislators, acquired courtesy of by-election results in December 2006.
   

To prevent the Speaker from invoking the dreaded S. 65, Mutharika has adopted an increasingly belligerent attitude towards the opposition, Parliament and the Courts - even openly challenging the opposition that he can govern without it.  And this in a Constitutional multi-party democracy!!

It is in this atmosphere that Muthatika has prorogued Parliament at least once; intimidated opposition members of Parliament, arrested some of them in what he called a tit-for-tat war; accused many, including his own Vice President, of trying to overthrow him, and intimated that Muluzi was due for arrest upon his return to Malawi from his current UK trip, inter alia.
 
As a gesture of support for democracy and the rule of law, Malawians from all walks of life should gather in their massive numbers to welcome back Dr. Bakili Muluzi when he touches down at Lilongwe's Kamuzu International Airport.

It is by gathering in their large numbers that the people will be saying to Mutharika, "We are tired of being arrested for nothing";  "We do not want to go back to one-party dictatorship"; "Stop trying to intimidate the opposition"; "Stop using the machinery of the state, including the justice system, to fight political wars to feed your hunger for dictatorship"; - you catch my drift.

Thank God for the courage of people like Dr. Bakili Muluzi, and the followers who will welcome him at Kamuzu Internal, for they it offers the vent through which these sentiments can find expression.

*Tom Likambale writes from Montreal, Canada.