Parties should level the playing field
The die is cast for the three leading political parties in the country regarding their elective conventions. The parties are the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the UTM Party (UTM). But is the playing field level?
The holding of these all-important elective conventions before an election year derives from the parties’ respective constitutions.
For MCP, the indaba has been set for August 8 to 12, 2024. DPP has said it will hold its convention in July this year. No date has been set yet. UTM, on the other hand, has not given a hint, save to confirm that, like in MCP, the mandate of the current leadership ended in 2023. In other words, for the past five months and counting, all UTM leaders are holding positions illegally.
Although each party has mentioned that every position is up for grabs, there is very little or no contention about whom each one of them wants to put up for the parties’ top leadership position. It is the incumbent presidents. The National Executive Committee (NEC) of each party has ensured that the incumbents on this position face no opposition.
MCP has settled for President Lazarus Chakwera, DPP for Peter Mutharika and UTM for Saulos Chilima. All that the parties want is for the conventions to rubber stamp the respective party’s NEC choice.
The real contest will be for other positions. For example, for MCP secretary general Eisenhower Mkaka is said to be facing the toughest fight. Not surprisingly, some aspirants are disgruntled and are alleging that the party or NEC is changing the rules of the game against the constitutional provisions just to disadvantage some candidates.
It is a serious anomaly that the same NEC officials who are vying for positions in the party’s politburo are also the organisers of the convention. Where will fairness come from when you have a player who is also the umpire? The MCP president needs to seriously consider the complaints from some party aspirants who claim they are being shut out of the contest by fellow aspirants.
Unfortunately, he seems to be already compromised himself for being a beneficiary of the undue favours from the same NEC which is barring other contestants. But Chakwera is in a pole position to fight such undemocratic intra-party tendencies symptomatic of most of if not all political parties in the country.
For DPP, the road to the current state of affairs in the party has not been without altercation. It has seen longtime party loyalists and NEC members such as Kondwani Nankhumwa, Greselder Jeffrey and others fired from the party for putting the party into ridicule embarrassing its leadership.
Without necessarily condoning their missteps on party protocol, DPP would long have avoided the tragic turn of events which culminated in the dismissal of some of its members.
The main problem in DPP after the party was ousted from power has been weak leadership. The man on top could not stamp his feet on the party. This is what gave rise to the two main camps—with one for Mutharika and the other for Nankhumwa. The latter is now out but my gut feeling is that there is something cooking that could hurt DPP.
The party could have done better to keep all its membership intact because a party’s strength is in the number of people who can vote for its leadership.
As for UTM, no one knows exactly what is cooking in the party. There are just too many uncertainties. Apart from the mist on the convention issue, no one knows whether or not Chilima will be his party’s torchbearer in 2025.
So far, he stands barred, according to the 2009 Constitutional Court’s ruling. This is a humongous stumbling block to his campaign, and as I have said time without number, waiting for the Malawi Electoral Commission to accept or reject his nomination papers on the Nomination Day will be dangerously putting all his eggs in one basket.
