PREVIEW
The former President plans to stand on the success of his economic record and cash in on in the unpopularity of his successor
Next year’s presidential elections are set to be a rerun of 2020, after the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on 18 August endorsed former President Peter Mutharika as its candidate.
Mutharika will be 85 on polling day but is planning to run on his government’s economic record and cash in on the unpopularity of his successor President Lazarus Chakwera. He has managed to wrest control of the DPP from his former protégé and party leader, Kondwani Nankhumwa, who left to form his own party, the People’s Development Party (PDP), in May (AC Vol 64 No 12, Mutharika manoeuvres for a comeback).
Though charges of corruption and nepotism were the main drivers of Mutharika’s defeat in 2020, the Chakwera administration has also been embroiled in its own graft allegations (AC Vol 65 No 13, No plaudits for anti-corruption supremo). Meanwhile, under Chakwera economic growth has been anaemic and plagued by foreign currency shortages that led to fuel and medicines shortages.
Mutharika could also benefit from the death of Vice-President Saulos Chilima in a plane crash in June. At Chilima’s burial on 17 June, his supporters cheered Mutharika as the man who brought Chilima into politics and made him his Vice-President in 2014, and booed Chakwera.
The one million votes Chilima polled in 2020 could be crucial in determining the presidency. However, Chilima had a substantial personal vote and many pundits believe that his United Transformation Movement (UTM) will struggle to get close to its performance in the 2020 polls, which were ordered after the Supreme Court annulled elections held in 2019, which had been won by Mutharika, citing mass rigging.
Chakwera and his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) formed the Tonse Alliance with Chilima’s UTM, but Mutharika is now hoping to partner with the UTM.
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