LOCAL GOVERNMENT POLLS STILL UNCERTAIN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 LILONGWE 000924

SIPDIS

SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

STATE FOR AF/S KAMANA MATHUR
STATE FOR INR/AA

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV KDEM MI
SUBJECT: LOCAL GOVERNMENT POLLS STILL UNCERTAIN


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1. (SBU) Summary: Plans for local government elections in
Malawi, delayed for a year and a half and now scheduled for
May/June 2007, are still tentative, though there is slow
movement in the right direction. End Summary.

Political Will?
--------------


2. (SBU) Mandated by the constitution, the local government
structure consists of twenty-eight district, three city,
one municipal and eight town assemblies. Each assembly has
a commissioner or executive, appointed by the president,
who manages the day-to-day operations of the local
governments. The assemblies have limited authority to make
local laws, including the imposition of fees and levies for
local services. They are also a major key to the
decentralization process that the government has been
pursuing with funding from the World Bank and the German
government. The GOM plans to devolve significant
responsibility for managing health, education and
agricultural programs to the local governments over the
next five years. In the absence of assemblies, the
commissioners/executives run the local administration, and
report directly to the Ministry of Local Government.


3. (SBU) Local governments were first elected into office in
November of 2000, and served a full term until 2005.
Elections for new assemblies, which were constitutionally
mandated to take place in May of 2005, have been pushed off
numerous times by the government. The initial delay was due
to a serious hunger crisis that demanded all available
resources. Since that time, Malawi enjoyed a good harvest in
the last growing season and the GOM's financial situation has
greatly improved. Though various reasons have been given for
the continued delay, both the President and the Minister of
Finance have privately expressed their lack of faith in local
governments in general, and have outlined their belief that
supporting the local government activities (salaries,
offices, etc.) would put too heavy of a burden on the
national budget. However, pressure from the donors, the
opposition parties, and civil society forced the government
to publicly promise to hold the elections in "the first part"
of 2007, according to a speech made by the Minister of
Finance on the floor of Parliament this past June. Thus, the
GOM is now looking to donors to fund some of the recurring
costs of the local governments.



3. (SBU) To that end the Minister of Finance recently called
donors together to ask for financial assistance to cover the
costs of running the local governments, once they are
elected. He hinted that if funds were not made available by
donors, the entire plan for devolution of power to local
governments might be reconsidered by the GOM. Even if donors
come up with the funds to support the local governments, it
will be a stretch to maintain the current timeline for local
polls. The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) faces a number
of technical challenges in preparing for the elections--such
as completely overhauling the voter rolls and redoing a
number of ward boundaries--and is already two months behind
the timeline which they developed. Unless the GOM moves
quickly to back the process, it is possible that elections,
if they take place at all, will have to be pushed back once
again.

Hurdles Ahead for MEC
--------------


4. (U) A host of challenges face the MEC in its attempt to
organize the elections for next year. First, though
legally required to have at least six Election Commissioners
to conduct business, there are currently on two (our of
eight) commissioner seats filled. Filling the other six
seats awaits candidate selection and appointment by the
President, in consultation with Parliament. Until there are
at least six seats filled the MEC cannot set the date of
elections, re-design wards, or carry out many of their
preparations for the election for fear that the results will
be challenged after-the-fact on claims that the MEC acted
unconstitutionally.


5. (U) A second issue that the MEC faces revolves around the

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constitutionality of having the polls in 2007. The
constitution of Malawi stipulates that local government
elections take place the year after general elections, a
provision that the government already violated. In order to
conduct the elections in 2007, the constitution must be
amended to allow for the elections to be held at another
time, aside from one year after general elections. The MEC
is again relying on government to pass this piece of
legislation out of Cabinet and through Parliament. If this
does not happen, again, the polls could be legally challenged
as being unconstitutional.


6. (U) Finally, the MEC must ensure that the government comes
through on its pledged financial support. Though Parliament
passed a budget allocating one billion kwatcha ($7.2 million)
to the MEC for the elections, the actual disbursement of this
money is not guaranteed. The Treasury, under the
administration of the Minister of Finance, must release the
funds to the MEC to conduct their activities. In last year's
budget MEC was allocated funds for elections that were never
released, leaving the line-item 'un-funded'. MEC, who is
also relying heavily on donor support to fund the elections,
plans to submit their cash-flow and official request for
funds-transfer within the coming weeks.

Comment
--------------


7. (SBU) There is skepticism about local government at the
highest level of the Malawi Government. This skepticism is
based on concerns about the cost of the elected counselors,
their qualifications and education, and a sense that the work
assigned to the elected councils would at best duplicate and
at worst interfere with the responsibilities of the members
of Parliament, the administrative duties of the
colonial-hangover district officer system, and the role of
the &traditional authorities,8 a government-supported
system of local chiefs and village heads. Sometimes this
skepticism is expressed as a series of problems to be solved
(we need to find the money for the councils, we need to put
minimum educational requirements in place, we need a law to
define clearly what they do, etc.) and at other times as a
more fundamental concern about loss of control and doubts
about the very concept of democracy at the local level (we
need to change the constitution to eliminate this
requirement). (fortunately, there is no/no backsliding on
the question of democracy at the national level.)


8. (SBU) Nevertheless, the constitution of Malawi requires
the existence of elected local governments, and
decentralization legislation requires that they manage
certain aspects of social services at the local level.
Failing to elect counselors means that the local councils are
entirely in the hands of the abovementioned existing
institutions, since MPs, district officials, and traditional
authorities sit on the district councils, albeit in a
non-voting capacity. This may be attractive to the &control
freaks8 who populate the central ministries in Lilongwe, but
it is antithetical to the existing constitutional scheme.
In our view, there is very little chance that the national
assembly could be persuaded to abolish the elected local
councils entirely by constitutional amendment, since the
assembly adopted without objection a &sense8 motion in the
last session calling on government to hold the elections as
soon as possible. Thus the skeptics are caught between the
constitution and a committed national assembly.


9. (SBU) Where the absence of local government really hurts,
however, is in amplifying the &democracy deficit8 in
Malawi. There are only two rungs to elected political office
at present, and the lowest is a seat in the national
assembly. (Of course, the second is the grand prize of the
presidency.) Therefore to fund entry to electoral politics in
this country, it,s necessary to be rich, to have rich
friends, or to have some other source of constituency-wide
popularity. Functioning local bodies would provide the minor
league tryouts for a new generation of competence-based
political leadership, something badly needed in this country,
if the problem of rent-seeking can be addressed. It is our
intention, continuing to work with other partners, to
encourage and facilitate the earliest possible election of
local governing councils.

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EASTHAM