Peter Mutharika affirms 2025 comeback
Former president Peter Mutharika yesterday reiterated his desire to be on the ballot in 2025 General Election to address economic challenges facing the country under his successor President Lazarus Chakwera.
“We are ready to end this oppression and take Malawi back on the path of development, back on the path of hope and I, Arthur Peter Mutharika, am ready to lead the DPP to victory in the election next year,” he said.
“Malawi is now a failed State. We can’t feed our own people; we can’t print our passports and driving licences… We can’t see where we are going; we have become oppressed in our own country. Malawi has a State president but has no leader and a leader is what we want.”
Speaking at his Page House during a press briefing, Mutharika, who first announced that he would be the DPP torchbearer in 2025 at the Mulhako wa Alhomwe in October last year, said the country has degenerated into a leadership crisis resulting in citizens experiencing myriad challenges, ranging from hunger to rising prices of basic commodities.
His affirmation of the 2025 aspirations came barely two days after the Malawi Congress Party National Executive Committee announced that it had settled on Chakwera to lead the party in the next elections.
The former president, who served between 2014 and 2020, claimed Malawi has plunged into the depth of darkness and is a nation in sorrow and pain because of the politically orchestrated violence targeting DPP followers.
“We, either, unite and end this oppression, or we all perish. But I have good news for you. The good news is that, we in the DPP are ready to govern this country again,” said Mutharika.
He claimed his party was now more united because traitors who, he alleged, were sponsored by MCP left and now the DPP has no camps but “one DPP under the leadership of APM”.
“MCP knows cannot defeat us in the election because all their strategies to eliminate me from the race have failed. They manufactured cases to arrest and convict me so that I don’t stand again and they failed. They sponsored traitors to take away the party; they have failed; now they want to introduce the age limit bill so that I don’t stand, they will fail again.”
Several DPP officials had earlier expressed interest to try their luck at the DPP convention. They include Chiradzulu South parliamentarian Joseph Mwanamvekha, former Reserve Bank Governor Dalitso Kabambe and DPP vice-president for the Eastern Region Bright Msaka.
Kabambe and Msaka could not be reached yesterday but when asked if he would contest the party’s presidency at the DPP convention slated for this July, after Mutharika announced his candidacy for the 2025 presidential election, Mwanamvekha said he would only provide a response after hearing what the former president said.
But in a separate interview, DPP secretary general Clement Mwale said Mutharika’s desire to be on the ballot in 2025 does not mean closing the door on aspirants at the party’s national convention.
Mwale told our sister newspaper The Nation of February 6 2024 that the party plans to hold its elective convention in July.
But reacting to Mutharika’s claims, MCP spokesperson Ezekiel Ching’oma said a good leader needs to prioritise the well-being of their citizens, promote economic growth and uphold democratic values.
“Chakwera is the leader that Malawi needed. Under the circumstances, we are in, with all these disasters, if we were still in the thieving government of DPP, people would have been dying of hunger… MCP will surprise these jealous people come 2025 General Election.”
