Malawians are watching

When there were squabbles in the country’s oldest party, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), many blamed them on its leader—Lazarus Chakwera. They branded him all sorts of names. Some of the issues which put him in a collision course with his party members was the matter about the convention.

The party’s secretary general Gustav Kaliwo wanted the indaba held in April last year. It never took place. Several months down the line, when the indaba was finally set, the same Kaliwo has turned round and is against it. The issue has pitted party leaders for quite some time and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, the differences over the convention and other issues among party leaders have sliced the good ole MCP leadership into two factions—the Chakwera camp and the Msowoya faction. How far down the members the rift is there is no telling.

As the squabbling in MCP continued ad nauseam, it looked like there was bliss in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Such indeed seemed the case until a complete rank outsider former first lady Callista Mutharika stirred the hornet nest. It did not matter that Callista does not hold any position in the DPP politburo. In fact, she does not even hold a position at branch level. But when she spoke about how she viewed her brother-in-law’s Peter Mutharika’s chances of leading the party to the Promised Land come 2019, it was epochal. Mincing no words and not weathering about it, it has never been the same in the party. Mutharika has acknowledged the cracks in the party. There are Judas Iscariots within the party, he rumbled this week as he returned from the United Kingdom. Two factions now exist in DPP. There is one which favours Mutharika to be the party’s torch bearer in the 2019 elections and the other which wants the younger—Saulos Chilima, who is Callista’s choice. Currently, there are no discernible undercurrents save for Mutharika’s declaration that he will represent the party in 2019, but which are tampered with counter statements by the other faction that they are strategising. We will stop at nothing to secure Chilima’s candidacy, they say. How they intend to do this in light of the silence by Chilima himself on the matter, nobody knows. For those of us sitting on the fence, all we see is smoke spewing out of the party. There must be fire somewhere within the party.

Will it be doused it? That could be a subject for another day.

Unlike in MCP where officials are fighting about whether and when to hold or not to hold a convention, in DPP, no-one is talking in definitive terms about when such an indaba will be held. What seems clear though from the smoke billowing out of the party’s chimneys is that the two factions are far from sitting each other around a table.

But with all this chaos in DPP, one would want to know where the United Democratic Front (UDF) stands? Is the party—which has been operating from DPP’s armpits—not afraid of suffering from collateral damage? Maybe it is time UDF veered off from the dangerous terrain DPP has taken and avoid getting mangled with it when it crush lands.

Meanwhile, there is also no end in sight to the power struggle in the Alliance for Democracy (Aford). This week, the divided party members elected two presidents for the party with two members of Parliament. One is led by Enock Chihana and the other by Frank Mwenefumbo. Each one is claiming to be the legitimate president and looks at the other as illegal. It is also all chaos in Aford. Chakufwa Tom Chihana, the founder of the party must be turning in his grave.

Just what happened to intra-party democracy?

This should be worrying for a country that voted for multiparty democracy 25 years ago and has been independent for 54 years.

The clear absence of intra-party democracy in the country’s three parties does not speak well for inter-party democracy in Malawi. If you cannot agree on one thing in one small family, what hope is there that you will diligently lead 18 million Malawians when voted into government? This is the big tragedy Malawians are facing.

It is a sad situation that calls for prayer and worship. But when two elephants are fighting, it is the grass underneath that suffers. The democracy that we all seek to jealously guard is at stake.

But Malawians have the power to shape their destiny in May next year. They are watching and may just have had enough of these shenanigans.