President Lazarus Chakwera Friday delivered his fifth State of the Nation Address (Sona) – one that broke with tradition.

Unlike the previous Sonas, by both him and his predecessors, which give a national summary of the state of affairs, this one scaled down to the councils to enumerate the achievements of his government in each of the country’s 28 districts.

At the end of the recount of each district, Chakwera made sure to appeal to registered voters in that district, in some cases giving numbers of people that have registered in the area, to vote for continued development in the September elections.

Starkly, in this highly-expected annual statement, the President avoided the biggest elephant in the room: the wreckage that is Malawi’s economy characterised by rising inflation, chronic shortage of forex and floundering businesses.

The address, titled ‘Taking our development forward to continue the progress we have delivered’, took the President almost three hours to deliver.

Chakwera acknowledged this was a long statement; and he justified this with an equally long concluding sentence.

“I have taken long deliberately because this is a House of records and I want it to be on record that this is what I have delivered for the Malawian people in the four years that I have been President, and I believe that I am at peace with God and I have enough trust in the Malawian people that they are fair minded enough to judge my performance as President by what I have done, not by what other politicians say about me or by the disasters that have befallen us as a nation and subjected us to a season of pain that we must have the strength to endure and overcome, and I believe that overcome we will,” he said.

In his address, Chakwera said he had delivered so much to the people of various districts in their season of sacrificial pain and he expects to deliver even more by 2030.

At the end of each district presentation, Chakwera told the voters to be ready to hear other parties offering to take the districts backward, while he is ready to continue taking the developments forward.

Among others, the address focussed on infrastructure developments in the districts such as roads, irrigation schemes, schools, school blocks, hospitals and health posts as well as other projects.

The address also tackled investments in human development through the National Economic Empowerment Fund (Neef) business and agriculture input loans, in addition to investments in Affordable Input Programme (AIP) and food assistance.

According to Chakwera, even in Thyolo where former presidents the late Bingu wa Mutharika and his brother Peter Mutharika of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) come from, his administration has implemented several development projects.

“I believe it is safe