A recent Afrobarometer survey has revealed a deepening distrust of Malawi’s legislators with many citizens describing members of Parliament (MPs) as ignorant and unresponsive to voters’ needs and out of touch with their constituencies.
Ideally, MPs represent constituents’ interests, draft and pass laws, and perform oversight of the Executive.
But the Afrobarometer findings, published in Dispatch number 1128 and authored by Libuseng Malephane, Bernie Appiah and Sophie Sunderland, warn that perceived unresponsiveness undermines both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the electoral process.
The survey, conducted between 2024 and 2025 across 38 countries including Malawi, found that 44 percent of Malawian respondents said MPs never listen to what voters have to say, while 36 percent were of the contrary view.
On the integrity of elections, 52 percent of respondents said elections are not free and fair, 44 percent said they are while 4 percent were neutral.
“And while citizens overwhelmingly believe that elections should produce leaders who are responsive to voter demands, in practice this responsiveness is widely seen as lacking,” the report states.
The survey findings have since stressed the need for leaders to be responsive and accountable to voters, who elect them on trust that they will ably represent their interests.
National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Trust and Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) say the findings reinforce their own pre and post-election studies, attributing the people’s perceptions to a disconnect between elected representatives and constituents, exacerbated by structural and behavioural challenges.
Nice Trust executive director Grey Kalindekafe in a written response attributed people’s perceptions towards MPs to weak constituency linkages and accountability mechanisms, resources allocation pressures, capacity gaps in representation and influence of campaign promises versus reality.
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“MPs frequently prioritise national politics or party agendas over local needs, with limited regular forums like Constituency Development Funds (CDF) consultations.
“For instance, Nice Trust’s post 2019 election monitoring revealed that only 32 percent of MPs held quarterly public clinics/consultation meetings in their constituencies, leaving voters feeling sidelined,” said Kalindekafe.
“On resource allocation pressures, MPs juggle legislative duties with high expectations for personal patronage [e.g. school fees, funerals], diverting focus from policy advocacy. This fosters perceptions of MPs as service providers rather than representatives, and other core responsibilities of legislation and oversight as evidenced by Afrobarometer’s prior rounds linking CDF mismanagement to 40 percent dissatisfaction.”
On capacity gaps, Kalindekafe said many MPs lack technical skills for evidence-based advocacy, relying on anecdotal rather than data-driven constituent feedback.
He said: “Urban-rural divides amplify this, with rural voters [who form 80 percent of Malawi’s electorate]feeling ignored on issues like agriculture subsidies.”
Kalindekafe further said pre-election pledges on infrastructure often falter post-election due to fiscal constraints, thereby eroding trust. He said a number of studies highlight how 2019 manifesto analysis showed 60 percent unfulfilled promises in sampled constituencies.
In a separate interview, political analyst wonderful Mkhutche said the people’s perception towards MPs is not surprising; stressing it has been the case in the most part of the country’s democratic history.
“The business in the house is skewed towards partisan politics or individual gain. The people do rightly observe that oftentimes the MPs do not act as representatives of the people,” said Mkhutche.
“No wonder, we see a lot of MPs failing to retain seats during an election and one major reason for this is because they forget to represent their constituents and start representing their parties or themselves.”
But in a separate written response, CMD executive director Boniface Chibwana said while such perceptions are long-standing, pointed out that they are not alien to the legislators, but rather, even to councillors.
“It is because there are overlaps on the responsibilities of MPs and councillors and mainly people’s perception is that MPs are supposed to bring local development and MPs have internalised that as opposed to representation, law making and oversight in Parliament,” he said.
“Of late, the politics of handouts has compounded the misunderstanding further. Issue-based politics is no longer an incentive these days which makes the perception to be very difficult between duty bearers and rights holders.”
Prior to the September 16 2025 General Election, the number of MPs increased from 193 to 229. However, five seats remain vacant and Malawi Electoral Commission is on March 17 2026 scheduled to conduct by-elections to fill the vacancies.
This means Parliament has 224 MPs as of February 2026.
MPs get elected in their respective constituencies using the First-Past-The-Post electoral system. This means a candidate in a parliamentary election with more first-preference votes subsequently gets elected as an MP.
