He was just a populist who knew how to manipulate the media and poor citizens and for that I'll give credit to him. However in reality he never believed what he stood for, fighting corruption on media whilst protecting the corrupt politburo in his party. Claimed to fund the multi-million dollar projects with internal funds from poor-man's taxes but on the contrary he left us with a burden in a form of humongous interest rates.
Had he been that popular as many claim he wouldn't tamper with the 2020 elections, but the opposition had made significant inroads and showed how he was a crony propagandist. For example Lissu was able to campaign against his "Machinga IDs" manipulations, imagine the president had lied that a mere ID without a picture or name would be used to access finance from formal institutions, can allow access to security funds and so on!! That alone swayed approval ratings from the "machingas/Micro-SMEs" who are majority in this country!!
Let's not give credit to propagandists who used lies and manipulations to consolidate power.