Over a year after losing power, MCP remains consumed by leadership wrangles instead of holding the DPP-led government to account for Malawi’s mounting socio-economic woes.
At the heart of the dispute is whether incumbent party president Lazarus Chakwera can seek a third term despite Article 31(3) of MCP’s constitution limiting the position to two five-year terms. This has divided the party between those insisting on compliance and those who want him to be the torchbearer for 2030 elections. But as things stand, he is barred from another term.
But why did MCP introduce a term limit after letting Hastings Kamuzu Banda lead it for 37 years? And why has that limit become contentious now that Chakwera is the one affected?
To understand the contradiction, we must look back. Kamuzu led MCP from April 1960 to July 20 1997. But before announcing his retirement from politics in 1997 due to old age and ill health, he lost Malawi’s first multiparty presidential elections in 1994 to Bakili Muluzi of UDF.
Interestingly, ahead of those 1994 polls, MCP embraced a two-term limit for its president to reflect the democratic principles underpinning the country’s new constitutional order. But that limit was not merely a line in a party rulebook. Asked why MCP embraced the two-term presidential limit, former spokesperson Maurice Munthali explained in 2018 that 10 years should be sufficient for any reasonable politician to make a meaningful contribution, either by winning national elections or strengthening the party as a democratic institution.
This echoed the decision of MCP delegates at the August 2013 convention, when they rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the late John Zenus Ungapake (JZU) Tembo to serve a third term as party president. JZU had led MCP since 2002, but the rule that blocked his third term opened the door for Chakwera.
That history is what makes the current dispute more than an ordinary contest over party leadership. To be fair, Chakwera occupies an important place in MCP’s modern history. After taking over as party president in 2013, he lost the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections before leading MCP to victory in the 2020 under the Tonse Alliance. He is the one who returned the party to government after 26 years in opposition.
But past achievements do not automatically entitle anyone to an extended stay in office. The question is whether the rules that blocked JZU should apply equally, regardless of who happens to lead the party. That is where the 2013 convention becomes a defining test of MCP’s commitment to its own democratic principles.
If MCP delegates rejected constitutional amendments to extend JZU’s tenure, on what grounds should the same principle become negotiable for Chakwera? What makes him an exception?
Of course, MCP is free to amend its constitution through established procedures, but those agitating for constitutional amendments must answer whether they are strengthening the party for future generations or reshaping it to accommodate one individual whose leadership has already been tested and nothing guarantees that he would win in 2030, even if he were allowed to remain MCP president.
More fundamentally, the dispute raises questions about the kind of political culture MCP wants to cultivate. If the rule that constrained JZU cannot constrain Chakwera today, what assurance is there that the party will resist the personalisation of power that Malawiand endured from 1964 to 1994?
History offers us a cautionary tale. In 2002, during his unsuccessful bid for a third presidential term, Muluzi challenged the principle of limited presidential tenure, declaring at a campaign rally: “All I’m asking for is just another 23 years.”
After eight years at Sanjika Palace, he publicly confessed that he wanted another 23 to match Kamuzu’s 31-year grip on power. That’s the danger when ambitious politicians start treating party or State constitutional restraints as obstacles to remove rather than safeguards against the concentration of power in individual hands.
This is why our democracy must be bigger than the people who lead it, and MCP’s test isn’t just whether Chakwera can remain president, but whether the party believes its principles matter more than any individual.
