In 2025, the culture of political handouts dominated public debate, especially in the countdown to the September 16 General Election.
Coincidentally, a year ago, the country was shocked when some political elites dished out billions to buy their way into the then governing Malawi Congress Party (MCP) politburo.
During the party’s elective convention, a seemingly startled MCP leader—Lazarus Chakwera, then head of State—slammed his ministers for flexing their financial muscle to elbow their way to the top.
“It is sad that some have resorted to distributing money, making it seem like the MCP is for sale. I urge you, delegates, to perform your duties without fear. Whether you have been enticed with money or not, elect the right people who have Malawi’s best interests at heart,” said a seemingly startled Chakwera.
However, as some political analysts observed, the eloquent rebuke proved too little, too late to curb the give-and-take politics that reared its ugly face all the way to the general election, where neither handouts nor abuse of State resources could save Chakwera from tumbling.
What began as a long-standing, but loosely regulated campaign practice evolved into one of the year’s most defining political controversies, testing the country’s laws, institutions and democratic values ahead of the polls.
Even the creation of the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties, a one-man band run by one Kizito Tenthani, could not stop the cancer reducing Malawi’s democracy to a not-so-competitive survival of the wealthiest.
Throughout the year, Nation Publications Limited kept an eye on the illicit political handouts, exposing the legal uncertainty, delayed reforms and dramatic flip-flops involving the presidency itself.
At the heart of the debacle lay a difficult national question: Where does legitimate political outreach end and voter inducement begin?
This is no easy question for a nation where political giveaways have become so entrenched that some voters expect to be palm-oiled, with some mislabelling the handouts as the only tangible benefits of democracy.
This year opened with cautious optimism.
In January, Tenthani, the Registrar of Political Parties, announced that the long-awaited regulations for the Political Parties Act of 2018, which outlaws handouts, were finally ready.
The law, passed nearly seven years earlier, lacked regulations to clarify what it prohibits and its ban on handouts remained largely symbolic.
Tenthani promised that once the regulations were tabled for debate in Parliament, politicians who continued to dish out cash and gifts risked hefty fines or jail time.
“The issue of handouts is an area where you definitely need regulations so that people understand what exactly handouts are within the confines of the law,” he said.
Yet even as the promise of reform was being made, reality on the ground told a different story. Political rallies continued to feature open cash distributions.
In February, MCP officials, led by the party’s strategist and senior Cabinet minister Ken Zikhale Ng’oma, publicly handed out cash during rallies, actions that legal experts described as clear violations of the letter and spirit of the law.
By April, the anti-handouts regulations had triggered fresh criticism from civil society and legal minds.
Among others, Chisankho Watch, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) and law scholar John Gift Mwakhwawa faulted the draft regulations for weak, blurry definitions that lacked proactive enforcement mechanisms.
They also decried a lack of clear strategies to address emerging forms of vote-buying, including digital inducements and third-party financing.
To the two watchdogs, relying on citizen complaints alone would result in selective enforcement, depriving poorer voters who fear reprisals.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice appeared reluctant to gazette the rules in time for the official campaign period.
The delays reinforced a growing public fear that those in power lacked the will to tackle political handouts as they also benefited from the illegality.
For the concerned citizens, the breakthrough came in May when the Political Parties (Complaints Handling) Regulations were finally published in the Gazette.
The move empowered Tenthani to receive complaints, investigate alleged handouts and recommend sanctions.
However, the regulations came into force barely a month before the official campaign period got underway on July 14.
While the registrar moved quickly to brief party leaders and assert readiness to enforce the law, some quarters questioned whether meaningful accountability could be achieved so close to the polls.
In July, Chakwera stirred a backlash when The Nation investigation revealed that State House had dished out K50 000s, food and MCP regalia to the youth, teachers, vendors and traditional leaders hosted by the President in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Mangochi.
Some attendees confirmed that Chakwera urged them to support his re-election, blurring the line between State functions and campaign activities.
Even chiefs disclosure of receiving as much as K400 000, depending on rank, sparked national outrage against abuse of public resources.
However, the government sanitised these payments as legitimate transport refunds and meal allowances, funded under the State Residences budget.
Then Minister of Information and Digitalisation Moses Kunkuyu argued that such hospitality has always been part of the presidency and questioned why Chakwera was being singled out for “opening State House to Malawians.”
He said: “There has never been anything wrong in our history with a Malawian traditional leader, a teacher, a civil society leader or a media practitioner being offered a drink, a meal or a transport refund after visiting their President.
“The presidency has always been provided with resources for visitors since time immemorial. What should be surprising is why other Presidents never opened the State House for Malawians.”
Governance experts described the ‘presidential hospitality’ as calculated inducements exploiting economic hardship to consolidate political loyalty.
By mid-July, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), then the largest opposition party in Parliament, formally petitioned the Registrar of Political Parties to penalise Chakwera and MCP for violating Section 41 of the Act.
The party demanded an investigation into the source of funds and a public reaffirmation of the law.
The complaint elevated the handouts issue from a governance debate to a direct institutional confrontation involving the Head of State.
Strangely, the registrar initially urged caution, saying context mattered. However, the pressure proved decisive.
In August, in a landmark move, Tenthani ordered President Chakwera and the MCP to immediately stop issuing cash handouts.
The regulator of political parties declared that the payments constituted a violation of the law, warning that further incidents would attract sanctions.
“I ordered them [Chakwera and MCP] to stop this forthwith and warned that if these incidents are repeated, I will not hesitate to give sanctions and penalties in accordance with the law,” he said
As campaigns intensified, so did allegations.
By the announcement of Mutharika’s victory over Chakwera in September, Tenthani’s office had received 162 handouts-related complaints from across the country.
The allegations cut across party lines, though independents and major parties dominated the list, he reported.
They ranged from cash payments and free maize milling to feasts and premature campaigning.
Following the elections, political parties under the Centre for Multiparty Democracy embarked on post-election “healing sessions” where smaller parties and civil society actors complained that weak enforcement of anti-handouts laws continued to tilt the playing field in favour of wealthy candidates.
This month, the Malawi Human Rights Commission released its final election observation report, which highlighted abuse of State resources and direct cash handouts to influence voters.
While the gazetting of regulations and the registrar’s intervention against the sitting President marked important milestones, laws alone cannot uproot a culture sustained by poverty and political expediency.
Now that the elections are gone and the political temperature is simmering down, this is the right time to revisit the laws and strengthen institutions established to restore law, transparency and accountability in political party spending.
