Poll victory tilts in Joyce Banda’s favour
President Joyce Banda launched this year’s campaign on March 29, 2014 at the jam packed Civo stadium with the confidence and swagger of a Head of State knowing she is so much better; so much popular than her opponents and determined to prove it quickly with the kind of campaign blitz Malawians have ever seen in the history of Malawi politics.
Since the launch, President Joyce Banda’s popularity has seen rising each passing day with huge turn out at all her rallies in the central and northern regions.
It is advisable and important that Malawians should quickly accept the reality that Dr Joyce Banda is going to comfortably win the presidential vote, what with a divided opposition that is still basking in the glory of their eroded yester popularity
Joyce Banda recent rallies in the central and northern regions have shown that the president will get majority votes in these two regions; over 80 percent in the north and 60 percent in the centre.
She will then just need 40 percent from the heavily divided Southern region to comfortably claim victory. The divided opposition better read the writing on the wall and accept that Dr Joyce Banda is far ahead of them in this campaign.
Belonging to the immortal company of great leaders like Barak Obama of USA, and late Margret Thatcher of Britain and Liberia’s Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, Dr. Joyce Banda has in a gripping act of benevolence, and for the umpteenth time, widened and highlighted the gulf in class between her contenders in the Presidential Race and herself with a whopping MK24, 000, 000 worth, ten ambulance donations to various hospitals she promised such assistances to. This really made the Malawi nation echo with elation.
This timely donation comes at a time when some Opposition Presidential Candidates have just realized that, there is no way one can make it to State House if one does not demonstrate the capacity to perform such social functions without the prompting of an impending election.
From the early eightiesJoyce Banda has always displayed amazing charity by indiscriminately assisting various groups of people. Her works speak for themselves and there is no need for her to put an advertorial for the world to know what she has been doing in Malawi for the past 30 years.
The Presidential aspirants from the Opposition are campaigning like a hoard of political fanatics in disarray, struggling horribly to get to grips with chasing after Banda. Their followers have shown great resilience but there are signs of huge fissures in intensity of support for their provosts, given the latest demonstration of their reduced circumstances as it is starting to eat away at this exquisite product.
With no hope of a consolation of a place at the Number One Plot, the disgruntled opposition presidential contenders’ supporters are slowly but consistently shifting camps in favor of the Peoples’ Party.
Meanwhile, Atupele Muluzi, UDF’s torch bearer in the forthcoming Tripartite Elections told his audience in Mzuzu that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have assured him that they will only resume aid to Malawi if there is change of government.
Now dragging these two respectable institutions into the gutter of dirty local politics is to hit below the belt: especially when the strange assertions could not be immediately supported by the two international organizations. It is my estimation that in the euphoria of the moment, and in the sometimes stupefying fog of political campaigning, Mr. Muluzi found himself unknowingly twisting his underwear with this supreme expression of the vices of the dark ages. He should make every effort not to be caught lying again!
Even if the IMF and WB representatives that the young Muluzi and his sexagenarian running mate, Godfrey Chapola, had been meeting were as unprofessional and as primitive as to make such uncouth and unreasonably intrusive comments, it would still be irresponsible and unpresidential of Mr. Muluzi to make such inappropriate comments at a presidential campaign rally.
My understanding of the duties of the IMF is that The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was created in 1945 by 29 member countries had its main goal to assist in reconstruction of the world’s international payment system post World War II. Thus it was mandated to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth and reduce world poverty.
Nowhere is it mentioned in its portfolio that it is supposed to promote regime change in any of its member countries as Mr. Atupele Muluzi alleges. It is therefore an affront to Madam Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of IMF and the other member states to suggest that IMF representatives have departed from their main apolitical functions by promoting regime change wherever they are sent to represent the interests of the institution.
I will not talk about the World Bank because the two share the same fundamental principle of being apolitical in the execution of their functions. But whoever is behind this inappropriate bomb-throwing, Dr. Joyce Banda remains the most powerful presidential candidate on an unforgettable visionary journey through the undeserved infinite torment of allegations like the ones made by Mr. Atupele Muluzi.
Joyce Banda’s glorification of the ways of the Almighty is seen through her good works and it is a magnificent protest against the ways in which men and their distorted allusions, in which Mr. Atupele Muluzi and his allies are trying to thwart the divine plan. JB is one of the few leaders in the world who enjoy fame both immediate and persistent. Which means her leadership will remain resilient and will confront all evil while remaining intensely personal and astutely political.
For fear that Mr. Austin Muluzi does not know, Dr. Joyce Banda’s compassion was born out of the anguish of a woman who has seen human life in Malawi being blighted by injustice and corruption of the times. My fellow Malawians let us stop being in perpetual denial and accept that Dr Joyce Banda is winning this election fair and square.
- The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Nyasa Times. Contributors are invited to write on opinion columns on any topical subject.
