VZCZCXRO0953
RR RUEHDU RUEHJO RUEHMR
DE RUEHLG #0377/01 1221520
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 021520Z MAY 06
FM AMEMBASSY LILONGWE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2694
INFO RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 0209
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0104
RUEHJO/AMCONSUL JOHANNESBURG 0204
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUEHLMC/MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE CORPORATION WASHDC

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 
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¶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