Findings by the Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR) of the Afrobarometer has shown that people of President Peter Mutharika\u2019s home district do not trust him.<\/p>\n
University of Malawi political science lecturer Boniface Dulani made his presentation titled \u2018Democratic Governance and People\u2019s Assessments of President Peter Mutharika\u2019s One Year in Office\u2019 at a meeting in Salima on Monday organised to assess Mutharika\u2019s 12-month-long rule.<\/p>\n
The survey that was conducted in three districts, Rumphi, Salima and Thyolo established, under political assessments, that there are low levels of trust ratings for Mutharika in Thyolo and Salima.<\/p>\n
\u201cInterestingly, Rumphi residents trust the President more than those of Thyolo and Salima,\u201d said Dulani.<\/p>\n
According to the key findings Dulani said the general picture from the survey is one of negativity where seven in ten (70 percent) respondents from the three districts say the country is going in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe negative assessments cut across sex and age,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, residents of Thyolo are slightly less pessimistic about the overall direction of the country compared to those from Rumphi and Salima.<\/p>\n
According to the survey, more than three quarters of Malawians in the three districts say that the country\u2019s economic situation is bad or very bad while nearly seven in 10, about 69 percent, rate their current economic situation equally negatively.<\/p>\n
He said it might be too early to pass judgement on the Mutharika presidency from a democracy and governance perspective after only a year in office but said it was still important to acknowledge that there have been a few promising signs, but some not-so-promising ones as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people, however, have passed their judgement- and that judgement is mostly negative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dulani said the survey on the aspect of trust was conducted in view of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Election Manifesto, 2014, on page 17 titled Principles of Good Governance which states:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DPP will strengthen a government that is accountable to the people and that can be trusted\u2026.The DPP will engage the best men and women who have the highest integrity to implement government programmes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
In other observations not related to the survey, Dulani said there are still lingering questions about liberalisation of the public media while no major progress on promises to trim presidential powers have so far been made.<\/p>\n
He also said government has failed to demonstrate that it is accountable and transparent to who, considering the ambiguity in the asset declaration law which requires that one should apply in order to access the \u2018so called public information\u2019.<\/p>\n
The academic also said there are some vestiges of intolerance where DPP followers brag that it\u2019s their time to plunder public resources and that people should do their bidding.<\/p>\n
\u201c[During] this year under review there has also been lack of leadership on critical issues, including issue of salaries for ministers; failure to resolve the issue of Nac funding to First Lady\u2019s body; judicial strike; MSB sale, and their focus on trivia.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch as the President said we focus on trivia, we would also want to point out that they have also been focusing on trivia like painting of the police cell [in Lumbadzi in Lilongwe],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dulani also said another failure is government\u2019s attempts to stifle civil society using the NGO law \u2018whose origins, lest we forget, was to stifle opposition to the third term bid\u2019.<\/p>\n
Presidential Adviser on NGOs Mabvuto Bamusi told the meeting that he will pass on all the observations to the President uncensored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Findings by the Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR) of the Afrobarometer has shown that people of President Peter Mutharika\u2019s home district do not trust him. University of Malawi political science lecturer Boniface Dulani made his presentation titled \u2018Democratic Governance and People\u2019s Assessments of President Peter Mutharika\u2019s One Year in Office\u2019 at a meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4299,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4295\/revisions\/4299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}