Anger on streets of Malawi as calls for president to step down grow

RIOTS broke out across Malawi yesterday after police and the army tried to disperse protesters demanding the resignation of President Bingu wa Mutharika, whom they accuse of ignoring civil liberties and destroying the economy.

In the southern African nation's capital, Lilongwe, witnesses said smoke was billowing into the sky as protesters burned cars, offices and shops belonging to ministers and politicians from Mr Mutharika's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Troops were deployed on the streets of the commercial capital, Blantyre, and police fired teargas at marchers who had gathered outside the stock exchange in defiance of a court order.

"The earlier injunction has been withdrawn, and we're proceeding on the planned route of the demonstration but sadly we're being smoked by teargas," Gift Makhwawa, president of the Malawi Law Society, said.

Opposition leader John Tembo, president of the Malawi Congress Party, said the protests were to express concern over "the eroding economic situation and abuse of human rights in the country".

Police spokesman Willie Mwaluka said security forces were on high alert to curb the unprecedented wave of unrest in the landlocked former British colony, which has strong Scottish connections starting with the explorer and missionary David Livingstone in 1859.

"We are assessing the situation as it unfolds. We don't have any confirmed figures of arrests, and extent of property damage," he said. Marchers in the northern city of Mzuzu ransacked the DPP's offices in a rare show of defiance against Mr Mutharika.

The Reverend Mezuwa Banda said he picked up two people in Mzuzu who had been shot by police with live ammunition.

"I don't know whether they will survive," he said. "One was shot in the stomach and the bullet came out the other side, the other had his liver and bowels out."

The owner of Malawi's private Capital Radio, Alaudin Osman, told the BBC the authorities ordered the station to stop live broadcasts as it was allegedly aggravating the situation.

"Rather than being shut down all together, we have decided to comply with the regulation," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

On Tuesday, DPP supporters, armed with machetes, smashed the vehicles of two private radio stations in Blantyre. They roamed the streets of the city, threatening to deal with anyone who took part in the protests.

Mr Mutharika, a former World Bank economist who was first elected in 2004, has presided over six years of fast but aid-funded economic growth. But he has become embroiled in a diplomatic row with Britain, Malawi's biggest donor, over a leaked embassy communication that referred to him as "autocratic and intolerant of criticism".After the expulsion of its ambassador to Lilongwe, Britain kicked out Malawi's representative in London and suspended aid worth 340 million over the next four years.

The freeze has left a yawning hole in the budget of a country that has historically relied on handouts for 40 per cent of its revenues, and intensified a dollar supply crunch that is threatening local currency the kwacha's peg at 150 to the US dollar.

Despite mounting commercial pressure on the currency and repeated calls from the likes of International Monetary Fund for a devaluation, Mr Mutharika has vowed to stand firm.

"We are not off-track. It is the IMF which is off-track in Malawi," he said on state media.

"When other developed countries are receiving bail-outs, what we get in Malawi are demands to devalue our currency."

Malawi is one of the world's poorest countries, with an estimated 75 per cent of the population living on less than $1 a day.

In 2005, when Scotland and Malawi formalised a co-operation agreement, the Scottish Government estimated Falkirk's economy was twice the size of Malawi's.