Visit brings perspective on reform

ALBANY -- The members of Parliament from Malawi, one of Africa's smallest and poorest countries, were at first too embarrassed to respond to a question about how much they're paid.

"You'd be laughing all the way back to your houses if I told you," Dr. George Nga Mtafu said.

A retired neurosurgeon who heads the opposition party and the reforms committee in Malawi's Parliament, Mtafu was speaking to a group of State University of New York officials in a wood-paneled, 13th-floor boardroom Friday afternoon.

The seven Parliament members, including Atupele Austin Muluzi, the son of former Malawi President Bakili Muluzi, were concluding a weeklong visit to Albany. They came to study New York state government in the hopes of taking back ideas to advance reform in their country's struggling, fledgling democracy.

In the Malawi National Assembly, commonly called the Parliament, there are 193 members and they're elected to five-year terms.

"We could both probably stand to learn a few things about reform," quipped Helen Desfosses, former president of the Albany Common Council and a UAlbany professor who teaches courses on African politics.

In Malawi, about two-thirds of the Parliament members were voted out in the last election.

It turns out the Malawians have a few things to learn from New York lawmakers, on that score at least.

"You practically have to die to lose your seat in the New York state Legislature," Desfosses noted.

The irony of Friday's salary question was not lost on Mtafu, head of the United Democratic Front, an opposition party that's openly feuding with Malawi's president, Bingu wa Mutharika, who quit UDF in a public row in 2005 over corruption allegations.

A few blocks up State Street hill, at the Capitol, a spirited debate is raging sotto voce among New York's lawmakers who want a raise above their $79,500 base pay (which typically exceeds $100,000 with bonuses for committee work) but fear angering their constituents.

In Malawi, members of Parliament earn 87,000 kwacha, about $500 in U.S. dollars.

That may amount to three times as much as a typical Malawian subsistence farmer earns growing maize and tobacco each year, but, as Mtafu put it, "It's peanuts."

Even worse than their low pay, perhaps, is the lack of respect elected officials are accorded in a country still struggling to find its footing as a democracy after breaking free from British imperial control in 1964.

Independence in Malawi was followed by a three-decade rule under tough, dictatorial President Hastings Kamuzu Banda. In 1994, the country adopted its first democratic constitution.

In practice, though, there is not a strong system of checks and balances in place and the executive branch still acts much like a dictatorship.

The most egregious usurpation of power by the president, according to the Parliament members, is in the matter of the budget. There is no public discussion, no input from lawmakers, no review or transparency.