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May 19, 2009 will be a day many Malawians will live to remember as far as Presidential and Parliamentary polls are concerned since the south-east African state became independent over four decades ago.

Malawians massively responded to the polls as over 90 percent of the registered (about 6 million) voters went to vote in the election described by both local and international observers as the most peaceful and democratic voting held in the region in recent past.

Considering the political tension between the previous administration and the country’s main opposition parties prior to the polls, most Malawians as well as the international community anticipated post-election aggression.

People expected no party leaders or supporters of the two sides to harmoniously concede defeat, regardless of which political party had prevailed; however, there was tranquility across the country during the whole processes of vote counting and announcement of results.

Before the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) officially declared winner of the presidential race, three opposition leaders including former President Dr Bakili Muluzi of the UDF, had already conceded defeat by publicly declaring his ‘hand-picked successor turned political-rival’ as defeater of the 2009 Malawi Presidential election.

Mutharika was officially declared winner by MEC on May 21, when the commission had finished counting 93 percent of the total votes casted in 3,897 polling stations across the country. He swept close to 2.8 million votes against his competitor JZU Tembo’s 1.2 million.

Having returned his State seat with a 65 percent victory, Mutharika’s win is best described as a ‘landslide victory’ seeing that his party also scooped 114 seats of the 193-member National Assembly with Tembo’s MCP getting 26, the UDF winning 16, independent MPs getting 29, and the remaining 8 going out to other political parties.

Nevertheless, as the DPP leader’s main contender Tembo is challenging the presidential election in court alleging his opponent rigged the polls as MCP electoral monitors were not allowed to be part of the vote counting process, it can be concluded that Malawians spoke and unanimously spoke through the ballot to re-elect Mutharika as their Head of State.

Consequently, what does Mutharika and his party’s landslide victory to continue governing one of Africa’s fast growing economies for the next but last five-year term mean to the country and people of Malawi?

What are the people’s expectations as the re-elected and newly sworn-in Malawi President and National Assembly form a government that will take them through to 2014?

“The voting is said, done and gone. What we expect now is more development on the ground rather than empty [campaign] promises,” says a small scale business operator, Raphael John, from Bvumbwe Trading Centre in Thyolo district, Southern Malawi.

John says though the President has promised a K3 billion loan accesses to the youths, there is also a need for Mutharika to facilitate establishment of more industrial companies to create more employment opportunities as it is the major obstacle facing Malawians.

He argues that having more people indulging in small and medium-scale businesses would yield nothing if there were less people employed as most beneficial customers are the working class.

“Provision of loans for young people to start businesses is a very welcome idea, but there is also one critical area that needs consideration. The equation has to be balanced. Much as we need more sellers, we also need more buyers on the market,” observes John.

Another small scale business lady Mary Malunga from Nkolokoti Township in the commercial capital Blantyre, who discloses to have voted for Mutharika because of his developmental leadership in the last five years, agrees with John saying, “Not all youths or the majority of Malawians can own business.”

She adds: “We expect him to lobby for new macro investments that can benefit Malawians through creation of employment.”

Malawi, whose economy is agro-based, depends on tobacco as the main foreign exchange earner since the leaf contributes about 60 percent of the country’s wealth.

However, at the same time the global community is lobbying for an anti-tobacco smoking campaign, the leaf in Malawi is also facing poor prices on the market and having entrusted Mutharika as the country’s leader, Gift Nkhoma, a tobacco farmer from the central district of Kasungu singles out improved prices of the green gold as his major expectation from Mutharika’s leadership.

“My expectations from the President cannot go beyond that of good prices from tobacco buyers. He must make sure that the next tobacco selling seasons must be accompanied with better prices. We toil a lot to come up with a tobacco leaf.

“Thus we want to have our product bought at a reasonable price,” pleads Nkhoma, referring to the country’s ongoing tobacco selling season which is marred by disagreements between producers and consumers as the latter are offering meager prices.

Many Malawians, who live below 1 US dollar per day, also expect exorbitant prices of commodities to go down as most poor people living in both rural and semi-urban areas cannot constantly afford descent meals.

“I don’t exactly know what it takes to control prices on the market but I believe he [the President] is what it takes. He is the big boss and can do it,” says Stan Rabison of Thondwe in the country’s eastern district of Zomba.

George Mkorongo, a student at Corporate Governance College in Blantyre says he is worried with dwindling education standards in the country which he attributes to lack of incentives to teachers particularly in government learning institutions, a development he said demoralizes the mentors thereby affecting the students in the end.

“We have witnessed poor results both at Malawi School Certificate of Education [MSCE] and Junior Certificate of Education [JCE] levels, and government must take the blame.

“Teachers are poorly paid and housed, generally this affects their performance. Even though Mutharika’s government has managed to hike teachers’ salaries in the recent past, more of that is needed has become expensive now,” urges Mkorongo, a voter himself.

Meanwhile in his acceptance speech few hours after he was declared winner on May 22, President Mutharika pledged continued development to Malawians, singling out agriculture and food security, provision of safe water, infrastructure development and youth empowerment, among other key areas of focus in this last term of his reign. {w}

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