Derek recently said that you don’t really need any other forms of entertainment other than following politics here. I can only give a brief summary, because it’s taken me too long to write this post, and so I’ve forgotten details.
Ok, so let’s start with the media, in the recent election, was for the most part very very biased. TVM’s election coverage was 98% positive coverage for the DPP and 2% negative coverage for everybody else. There were only a couple of news outlets that did any better. So this is bad, yeah? Generally considered to be a bad thing for democracy, right?
Well, the media hates the opposition because they were upset at the budget passed by the opposition in Parliament. That Budget? 1 Tambala per year.
Just as a review, 100 Tambala=1 Kwacha. 140 Kwacha=1 dollar.
Of course, the opposition decided to diss the media because the media was biased for the DPP.
Oh, and the UDF/MCP Coalition candidate used to be Dr. Kamuzu Banda, President-for-Life’s enforcer guy. UDF only started the coalition because Muluzi was declared ineligible to run for prez. Muluzi thought 5 years out of office should wipe out the fact that he had already been president for 10 years and took it as high as he could.
Muluzi, in the last election, called Tembo a murderer and evil—it’s difficult to get people to believe in you when you coalition with someone you called a murderer.
So I guess that explains why Muluzi congratulated Bingu on his win when Tembo was still contesting the results. When asked about why he was going against the coalition, he said, “That was for the election only.”
Which I guess was a smart move on his part, because it later came out that the UDF/MCP coalition cabinet, if it had come into being, was to have no UDF members.
Muluzi may have been upset about the betrayal of his UDF people, but it was hard to tell, because around that time the papers started covering Muluzi’s son publically declaring that his father is old and needs to retire. Please. Now, for pete’s sake.
I think I’m going to miss election season.
