If economic conditions don’t improve, the President’s prospects for next year’s elections look poor
President Joyce Banda opened Parliament in May and announced a strong budget in an attempt to regain ground lost to an opposition that is already in election mode. While donors and diplomats cheer her on, oppositionists call her proposals ‘wishful, childish or purposeless’. She has stuck to her guns, however, adopting the economic reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other lenders, and has won some respite thanks to the strengthening kwacha, and a slowdown in the increase in fuel prices. If the ‘liberalising’ reforms translate into any economic success, Banda’s political fortunes may follow suit.
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