![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/photo_1310722723596-1-0.jpg\" "\\"photo_1310722723596-1-0\\"")
Malawian opposition on Friday blamed\u00a0President Bingu wa Mutharika’s “sheer arrogance” for Britian’s decision to suspend budgetary aid to the poor southern African nation.<\/p>\nMalawian opposition on Friday blamed\u00a0President Bingu wa Mutharika’s “sheer arrogance” for Britian’s decision to suspend budgetary aid to the poor southern African nation.<\/p>\n
“The President had displayed sheer arrogance by fighting the British who are our major donor,” Friday Jumbe, leader of the former ruling United Democratic Front, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“Mutharika has no choice but to swallow his pride and apologise to the British and normalise our diplomatic relations. He is indeed becoming a dictator,” Jumbe, a former\u00a0finance minister, said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) announced its was suspending budgetary aid to Malawi over poor governance, as fast-deteriorating relations between the two countries reached a new low.<\/p>\n
DFID accused the Malawian government of suppressing demonstrations, intimidating civil society organisations and legislating the obstruction of political opponents<\/p>\n
Britain provided around \u00a319 million ($30.7 million, 21.7 million euros) of budgetary aid last year, which was meant to help the government deliver a national strategy for poverty reduction against an agreed set of targets.<\/p>\n
Jumbe said the measure would leave a “big hole in Malawi’s resource envelope.”<\/p>\n
Nancy Tembo, a spokeswoman for the\u00a0Malawi Congress Party, said the government was “so arrogant on the question of governance.”<\/p>\n
She said the aid suspension would hit “ordinary Malawians who will fail to access drugs in hospitals.”<\/p>\n
British aid was used in the health, agriculture and governance sectors.<\/p>\n
The independent Nation newspaper described Mutharika as a ‘Mr. Know-it-All’ style leader who was “holding the key and accountable for the UK aid mess.”<\/p>\n
“If he chooses to continue playing difficult-which we fear is not beyond him–posterity will judge him.”<\/p>\n
Bilateral relations became strained in April when the WikiLeaks website published a diplomatic cable in which Britain accused Mutharika of “becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism”.<\/p>\n
The dispute led to the expulsion of both nations’ ambassadors.<\/p>\n
Jumbe argued what the expelled British high commissioner to Malawi, Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, said in his leaked memos to London was “nothing new but something which we Malawians had been saying all along.”<\/p>\n
Mutharika, Jumbe said, was “becoming a bad leader who will end up with a bad legacy that failed to deliver.<\/p>\n
“He is going in the wrong direction. He is our employee who is not working for the common good of Malawians.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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