Kingmaker with no-one to make him king

For whatever reason, Vice-President Sauilos Chilima and his supporters are too quiet for my comfort on the critical issue of the UTM leader’s 2025 candidacy.

And so I aver for the umpteenth time that Chilima, the UTM politburo and all his supporters and sympathisers who want the man to stand as a presidential candidate in September 2025, should by now have started clearing the legal impediments that lie in his way.

This is about the 2009 Constitutional Court ruling which stipulates that the Constitution limits the President as well as first and second vice-presidents to serve only two five-year consecutive terms and so it stands in the way of Chilima’s presidency ambitions.

The ruling followed an application by former president Bakili Muluzi and his UDF party as applicants after the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) rebuffed his third term presidential nomination. The court ruling also restrains any presidential candidate from picking a vice-president or second vice-president as their running mate if they served the maximum two terms.

Unless, maybe, Chilima has something he is keeping close to his chest, we can say without fear of contradiction that by September 2025, it will have been cast in stone that he would have served two maximum terms, making him not eligible to stand for any position in the presidency.

Former Malawi Law Society secretary Martha Kaukonde was on October 18 2020 quoted by our sister newspaper The Nation as saying: “This judgement is dated 16th May 2009 and cannot be appealed from now by the parties, let alone Dr. Saulosi Chilima who was not party to the case. So the option of appealing this decision is out of question and MLS wouldn’t recommend a constitutional amendment just to suit a particular individual.”

Kaukonde was further quoted as saying that: “If in spite of this clear judicial guidance Chilima holds ambitions to contest for presidency, it would be advisable for him to take up a case in court and see if the Judiciary will change its mind on the matter and give a different interpretation to the provisions which were already interpreted in this judgement.

Said Kaukonde: “Bringing up a case would be against the constitutional provisions and not the judgement.”

At that time, Chilima, speaking through his spokesperson Pilirani Phiri declined to comment on the matter.  

But quite often I hear Chilima’s campaigners passionately averring exactly the opposite of MLS’ position on the matter. They speak as if they know what they will do.

But time is obviously not on their side.

Just this week speaking in Kasungu, UTM secretary general Patricia Kaliati oozing so much confidence said her party would change the lives of Malawians if given the chance in 2025 to implement its manifesto.

But who else other than Chilima is there in UTM to lead the party since the road is currently blocked for the party’s current leader to contest as a presidential candidate?

And it looks like when the two top Tonse Alliance leaders Lazarus Chakwera and Chilima allegedly agreed that the former would only serve as president for one term and then leave the stage for the latter, Chilima had not deeply reflected on this provision.

What to do now?

My position remains unshaken that unless Chilima has resigned to fate, time is now to start clearing the boulders strewn in his path towards fulfilling his ambitions.

Maybe we should not wish him away after all. The man is a kingmaker. That cannot be disputed. Two presidential candidates—Peter Mutharika in 2014 and Chakwera in 2020—picked him as his running mate. And they picked gold.

But now who is there to do to him what he has done to two presidents—one each to Mutharika and Chakwera?