The by-election results were inevitable
Another by-election has come and gone and the results are not shocking. The Vice-President, who was roped in to create a miracle for the ruling party, has failed miserably.
In the shadows of the sudden death of its chairperson, Justice Maxon Mbendera and unresolved investigation into financial mismanagement, the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) hastily conducted by-elections in one constituency and a Malawi Congress Party (MCP) stronghold Mchinji West, wards in Bembeke, Dedza, Sadzi in Zomba, Kaliyeka and Bunda in Lilongwe and Kasungu, respectively, this week.
Going by the media coverage, both conventional and unconventional, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must have allocated their candidate a seat in the Parliament meeting which begins on November 21.
The same media portrayed MCP as shaking in its boots, fearing that it would lose a seat that it could not afford to let go of at a time when the loyalties of two of its members, Jessie Kabwila and Joseph Njobvualema is uncertain and the renegade rebel Felix Jumbe is now a backbencher.
Throughout the campaign, MCP seemed unfazed by the high profile presence of Saulos Chilima in the areas under contest. But with its seemingly low budget campaign, the MCP president Lazarus Chakwera and his people took to the campaign trail like it was 2019.
The visits to Mchinji were so frequent that the media lost count and this was for a good reason. MCP and the opposition desparately needed an additional voice ahead of the fireworks that the November meeting promises to deliver.
Chilima, on the other hand, had the unenviable and daunting task of making the people of Mchinji West believe their issues mattered to the DPP and that these problems would only the be resolved when the representative belong to the ruling party. How wrong he was, as we have seen from the 5 000 vote margin between the DPP and MCP and MCP candidates.
The country is this year feeling the worst effects of water shortages, electricity blackouts as well as hunger. Until last week, rural people had no access to cheap maize only found in Admarc depots.
It boggles the mind how DPP thought the people of Mchinji West would tick the box with the three maize cobs when their own granaries did not have even a husk and they were being forced to buy maize at exorbitant prices. How did the DPP expect the businesspersons at Kamwendo Trading Centre to vote for DPP when they were experiencing 16 to 18 hours blackouts which were crippling their businesses?
Sure, these problems are not necessarily DPP’s making but rural voters don’t care. They want what they lack and they want it now. Deliver or suffer the consequences.
Chilima did not stand a chance when it came to delivering Mchinji West and some of the wards to the party that has no trust in his political engineering abilities. In actual sense, he was a victim of his own success. He joined DPP barely months before elections and he is now credited for painting the whole Ntcheu blue.
Mchinji West, Bembeke, Sadzi, Kaliyeka and Bunda were the litmus test for Chilima and he has not passed as spectacularly as most people expected him. The geriatrics in the DPP must be crowing over this loss, seeing it as the fall of Chilima’s political ambitions. But it is not 2019 yet, Malawian politics has the tendency of shocking even the most battle hardened politician. Justin Malewezi and Joyce Banda come to mind. n
