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Stefan Leiderer et al. follows: “We got the ceilings only on Friday. But they [the authority immediately above them] got it late from MoF. And they got it late from the donors. Now we have two days to give them the budget. They just pass on the ball.” Local government elections and the dissolution of District Assemblies Local government elections are provided for in the constitution of Malawi. However, at least officially due to budget reasons, GoM did not budget for the local elections that would have been due in May 2005. The “trigger event” therefore is the lack of money provided for local elections in the budget 2004/2005. Following the constitution, the minister therefore announced on April 14, 2005 that the local assemblies stand dissolved by law effectively by March 20. Instead of elected councillors, the district commissioners and local chief executives with the support of the traditional authorities should run the district until the next elections, now planned for 2006. Soon after that message, the city assembly of Lilongwe appealed against this decision at the High Court, arguing that local councillors have been elected for five years in November 2000. On April 22, High Court ordered that the ministry should not start acting as if assemblies were dissolved until a judicial review on the matter was carried out. The official reason given subsequently for not holding the elections was that any available money was needed to buy maize in order to compensate the effects of the extremely poor 2005 harvest, stifling any serious protest. It is easy to imagine how much uncertainty this affair must have caused at local level, particularly under conditions of weak capacity and coordination. Again, an ad hoc mode of action characterises this affair. Nobody, particularly not at local level, has really thought about this problem before. Uncertainty about the exact date of new local elections has been more or less accepted. Therefore, the order to dissolve the assemblies came very surprisingly and local councillors perceived it as an ad hoc decision. The fact that district councillors, chief executives and traditional authorities should take over the responsibilities of elected councillors can be considered as an informal practice, although it has been officially announced. This practice is likely to dramatically increase uncertainty for local stakeholders and the local population about hierarchy and responsibility of the different actors at local level and therefore have a negative impact on the decentralisation process in Malawi. Temporarily government seemed to intend to postpone local elections until 2009. However, by the end of 2006, preparations for local elections seemed finally to be under way, with seven billion Kwacha set aside for the purpose. 136 German Development Institute
Public Financial Management for PRSP Implementation in Malawi The introduction of PFM reforms Although this illustration refers to the introduction of PFM reforms at local government level, the same phenomenon is also common at central government level. As a pilot project in terms of sector devolution, the responsibility for the payroll of teachers should be devolved to the districts. This time the “trigger event” was less an event, but it was the fact that coordination and communication between central and local government level was completely lacking. The training measures for preparing the devolution of the payroll was very much ad hoc from the perspective of the district education managers who were going to be responsible for managing the teacher’s payroll. Although informal practices have not yet arisen from this process, it has created a lot of uncertainty. This is not a very positive context for such an important reform. The acting DEM of Dedza district, one of the three pilot districts in Malawi, clearly illustrates that: “[On the devolution of the payroll for teachers] we got the first information in November last year. This year there was a week when we have been told what exactly this means and we have been trained on how to use the computers for that. Three districts will start, seven have been trained. I don’t know whether we fall into the first three or the last four. We have been told that we will be informed, there will be more training. We are still waiting to see. … The problem is: other people are planning, the implementers are somewhere else. We’re only told: come here. We will tell you when to continue. So, we are waiting, we have not yet been told.” 7.2.2 Why formal PFM rules are undermined As has been discussed in the last chapter, the causes for current PFM practice in Malawi being characterised by uncertainty, ad hoc mode of planning and budgeting and informal practices have their roots in five key areas. In order to understand the mechanisms at work, it is, however, necessary to take a closer look at the inner workings of this phenomenon. This analysis cannot be comprehensive due to the manifold interrelations between the various shortcomings in the five areas identified above and between the features of uncertainty, ad hoc behaviour and informal practices, Therefore, only the most relevant relations impacting on PFM performance are presented. German Development Institute 137
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Studies Deutsches Institut für Ent
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Bibliography 151 Annexes 157 Tables
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