New brooms

The President hopes to prosecute his corrupt predecessors, who keep fighting back

President Bingu wa Mutharika has surprised those who dismissed him as his predecessor's uncharismatic surrogate. He has won cross-party support and is rapidly becoming popular, three months after scraping into the presidency in the May election (AC Vol 45 No 12). Former opponents are being enticed into the United Democratic Front (UDF), and pledges to expose corruption please voters. But the UDF old guard have a lot to lose if the anti-corruption campaign proves to be more than just rhetoric. They are already at daggers drawn with Mutharika's reformers, who are using arrests and dark warnings of corruption proceedings to keep their powerful adversaries at bay.

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Bingu wa Mutharika, United States, Britain, Bakili Muluzi, Lilongwe relocation, Dumbo Lemani, Brown Mpinganjira, Peter Chupa, Kennedy Makwangwala, Shabir Suleman, Clive Macholowe, Joseph Chimbayo, Marko Chiziko, Ishmael Wadi, Fahad Assani, Cassim Chilumpha, John Tembo, Joseph Aironi, Kamuzu Hastings Banda, Gustav Kaliwo, Ralph Kasambara, No Friday feeling, Goodall Gondwe, Friday Jumbe, Paul Maulidi, Zimbabwe

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