MALAWI PARLIAMENT CLOSES ANOTHER UNPRODUCTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 LILONGWE 000377 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR AF/S GABRIELLE MALLORY STATE FOR EB/IFD/ODF LINDA SPECHT AND ELAINE JONES TREASURY FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS/AFRICA/BEN CUSHMAN STATE PLEASE PASS TO MCC PARIS FOR D'ELIA JOHANNESBURG FOR FCS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON EFIN PGOV MI SUBJECT: MALAWI PARLIAMENT CLOSES ANOTHER UNPRODUCTIVE SESSION REF: LILONGWE 66 LILONGWE 00000377 001.2 OF 003 This message is sensitive but unclassified--not for Internet distribution. -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (SBU) On April 28, Malawi's National Assembly adjourned a four-week sitting after making very little progress through its growing legislative agenda. Among the measures passed were: -- a resolution accepting the GOM's mid-year budget review -- bills to accept World Bank grants and loans -- a bill reorganizing the National Roads Agency -- members' bills on gender violence and constituency development funds. The house failed to debate bills on national registration, revision of the penal code, and acceptance of road and health-sector funds. Despite Embassy education and lobbying for an anti-money laundering bill, opposition leadership blocked the bill at the last minute. Parliament continues to miss every available opportunity to establish itself as a serious player Malawi, and the minority government still has not shown it can manage the simplest legislative agenda. End summary. -------------- --- WHAT THEY DID: BUDGET, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, GRANTS -------------- --- ¶2. (U) Parliament did accept the government's mid-year budget review, which included major adjustments to account for overspending in maize purchases and fertilizer subsidies, which were mostly the results of last season's drought. The total recurrent expenditures and lending will exceed the MK119 billion ($880 million) budget by MK9.5 billion ($70 million),with slightly over half that going to maize purchases and a quarter to a larger than planned fertilizer program. The higher expenditure was mostly offset by higher tax revenues and grants, amounting to MK6 billion ($44 million),leaving a net deficit increase from MK2.7 billion to MK6.1 billion ($45 million). Even with this higher deficit, the GOM plans to retire MK1.5 billion ($11 million) in domestic debt this fiscal year. ¶3. (U) The house also passed a controversial bill criminalizing domestic violence, an issue that has dominated the local press over the past six months, thanks to several particularly horrific cases. Despite a number of male MPs walking out in protest (after it was clear the bill would pass),the government was able to pass the bill, which establishes stiffer penalties for domestic and gender-based violence. ¶4. (U) The other bills Parliament passed were hardly controversial: a bill accepting World Bank grants and loans for irrigation and rural development, a suite of bills separating the National Roads Agency's financing arm from the operational arm, and a resolution for establishing a constituency development fund of MK5 million ($37,000) in each MP's district. Government argued against the constituency fund, saying that it is liable to be used for MPs' personal gain; the resolution passed overwhelmingly. -------------- NOT DONE: AML LEGISLATION AND MUCH, MUCH MORE -------------- ¶5. (SBU) The list of non-accomplishments is a bit longer, starting with the GOM's "top priority" for this session: the anti-money laundering bill. As previously reported (reftel), this bill has been languishing in committee since 2002 and has been on the current Parliament's agenda for several sessions now. Embassy has been garnering support for this LILONGWE 00000377 002.2 OF 003 measure since mid-2005, including providing technical assistance for the Legal Affairs Committee, discussion sessions with senior MPs, and one-on-one lobbying at every opportunity. While the support appeared to be lined up as the session began, at the last minute opposition leader John Tembo told the government side that he would not support the bill until its anti-terrorist finance provisions were excised and placed in a separate bill. This appears to have been a thin pretense for blocking the bill, perhaps in collusion with former President Bakili Muluzi, or simply to demonstrate that he can block important bills at will. In either case, the government neither foresaw nor forestalled Tembo's maneuver, and it ended by not offering the bill for debate. (The AML bill is a key legislative piece in Malawi's Millennium Challenge threshold program, which focuses on government financial management and control of corruption.) ¶6. (SBU) Other bills not taken up include long-delayed legislation for a national identification system, a revision of the penal code, police reform, and securities regulation. Incredibly, the legislature also failed to act on two donor-financed development authorizations: one authorizing acceptance of a road-building loan from the Kuwait Fund, and another for a World Bank loan for the health sector. -------------- -- COMMENT: WHAT DID THEY--AND WHAT WILL THEY--DO? -------------- -- ¶7. (SBU) Inquiring minds may wonder what a legislature can do for four weeks and still get so little done. The answers are simple, if somewhat discouraging: it can devote huge amounts of floor time to individual members asking the government for health clinics, boreholes, schools, etc.; it can squabble over whether government subsidized enough fertilizer or gave out enough free maize in any given constituency; mainly, it can argue endlessly over opposition's accusations of everything from theft to neglect to stupidity. What this body seems utterly unable to do is to organize an approach to getting work done. Partly, this is a function of the government's minority position; though it has been gaining members by the week, it still does not have a working majority. The opposition is perfectly content to accomplish nothing for five years, if it cannot unseat the government. For its part, the government seems to think there is no benefit and much risk in confrontation, so it continues to drift along with the opposition's non-agenda. For the government to manage the opposition with old-fashioned politicking, or for the legislature to develop its own sense of identity and usefulness, and thus its own agenda, are at this juncture equally unimaginable. ¶8. (SBU) AMBASSADOR,S COMMENT: The inactivity described above derives from a fundamental structural anomaly in Malawi,s constitutional scheme, namely the imperfect grafting of a presidential executive system upon a Westminster-style legislature. The rigid five year terms of legislators and executive alike don,t help. It is not necessary for the chief executive to attain a majority to form a government, and he is in no way beholden to the Parliament for his job. There is no provision for a "snap poll," and there is no provision short of impeachment (and, unthinkable at present, the succession of the Vice President) to change the executive. The courts, when presented with a controversial political question, issue an injunction to freeze the status quo and seem rarely ever to make a final ruling. When Bingu wa Mutharika, post election, left the UDF and formed his DPP, secure in his position as President, that wholly unanticipated act set in motion a continuing confrontation--over impeachment, the effects of floor-crossing, and doubtless other questions that creative political minds will discover. Unfortunately for Malawi, there are no easy remedies, and the next election isn,t until 2009, unless somehow the government reaches its "working majority" though defections from other parties. ¶9. (SBU) COMMENT CONTINUED: The three-way split in Parliament also makes it extremely difficult to get a LILONGWE 00000377 003.2 OF 003 straight story from any assortment of contacts about what is happening in the House. During three days of unsuccessful lobbying last week at Parliament in favor of the money-laundering bill, all our contacts on the government side blamed the UDF and accused Bakili Muluzi of manipulating John Tembo; the UDF said it was all Tembo,s doing; and Tembo blamed the government, in a perfect circle. Some government hard liners were arguing that they should force a vote for raw political gain, to put Tembo and the UDF on the side of the devil in favor of money-laundering. In the end, the President and the Finance Minister, who call the shots for the government in Parliament, decided that the less evil solution was to bypass the bill on the agenda and take it up when Parliament comes back into session in June. Had they pushed the bill to a vote, they might very well have lost the vote, and thereafter been faced with headlines along the lines of "Malawi favors money-laundering" and an uphill struggle to get this complex, poorly-understood and rather controversial bill back on the agenda. The new wild card for the June session is the arrest of the Vice President (see septel). EASTHAM