President Lazarus Chakwera’s State House meetings with various groups have brought to the fore the use of public resources for campaign ahead of the September 16 General Election.
The Nation has established through interviews with some of the attendees—including youths, traditional leaders, teachers and vendors—that during the meetings, participants are paid a minimum of K50 000 each as transport refund or meal allowance despite the fact that in most cases, attendees are ferried in prepaid hired buses.
Participants are also given Malawi Congress Party (MCP)-branded regalia such as T-shirts and other fabrics, according to some attendees, who also stated that the consistent message from the President during the meetings is that they should vote to maintain the current administration sustain development momentum.
During a spot-check yesterday outside Sanjika Palace in Blantyre, the President’s official residence in the commercial city, scores of trucks and buses were seen dropping off or picking up people, mostly youths
who had a date with Chakwera.
Tadala Kachingwe, one of the youth who attended yesterday’s
session, claimed that thousands of youths were in attendance at the palace’s mini stadium and each of them received K50 000.
Kachingwe said the youth were also given drinks and a bun each plus a two-metre MCP-branded wrapper cloth (chitenje) and T-shirt.
“The President was just enlightening us on the consequences of changing the current administration [in the September 16 General Election]. He said any change will affect projects being implemented,” said Kachingwe.
Yesterday afternoon, Chakwera was also expected to meet top leadership of the Islamic community while last Thursday he hosted vendors from Chikwawa and Nsanje districts before meeting traditional leaders from Phalombe, Mulanje, Thyolo and Chiradzulu districts.
Earlier yesterday, State House Press Office indicated that the audience between Chakwera and the Islamic faith leaders had been cancelled. However, when The Nation visited the precincts of Sanjika Palace yesterday it was learnt from security at the main gate that there was “only a list of sheikhs, no media” cleared.
In the past week, The Nation has spoken to 16 traditional leaders and nine vendors who have separately confirmed attending the meetings with the President and that the message was about the need to retain Chakwera’s administration.
the President’s ‘guests’ yesterday.
| Jonathan Pasungwi
Some of the vendors said they were given K25 000 each instead of K50 000 as the meeting budgeted for 4 000 vendors.
On the other hand, traditional leaders said they received between K50 000 and K400 000 each, depending on seniority.
A traditional leader from Chiradzulu said: “We left Sanjika at around 11pm because the President first met vendors. We were about 2 000 chiefs as they [State House] invited 500 traditional leaders per district.
“Village heads and group village heads received K50 000 each, sub-T/As [Traditional Authorities] K100 000 and T/As received K200 000 each, while others received up to K400 000 depending on seniority.”
Two other traditional leaders from Zomba and Mangochi corroborated the assertions, saying they too received a minimum of K50 000 each for attending the meetings at Chikoko Bay, the President’s official lakeside retreat, in Mangochi in May and June this year.
While governance and accountability experts have faulted the expenditure as abuse of public resources, Minister of Information and Digitilisation Moses Kunkuyu has justified Chakwera’s gestures and said the resources were part of the State Residences allocation.
In an interview yesterday, he said Chakwera had done nothing wrong because the money was a transport refund.
Said Kunkuyu: “There has never been anything wrong in our history with a Malawian traditional leader, a teacher, a CSO [civil society organisation] 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.”
In the 2025/26 National Budget, State Residences was allocated K67 billion.
On whether the President’s cash and party cloth splash constitutes a violation of the campaign handouts restrictions, registrar of political parties Kizito Tenthani said they will need to understand in what context the President was distributing the said resources.
Commenting on the matter in separate interviews, Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency executive director Willy Kambwandira, governance scholar at Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences Andrew Kaponya and political analyst George Phiri queried the rationale behind Chakwera’s meetings.
Kambwandira said the cash distribution was a desperate effort to secure political loyalty and consolidate support through financial inducements.
On his part, Kaponya noted that resources spent for meeting chiefs, vendors, teachers and youths could have been used for other critical areas such as buying medical drugs in some public hospitals.
Phiri said the resources that Chakwera is giving out to chiefs and other people are hard to justify because there is no basis for giving visitors equal amount of money as if they come from one house.
Section 41 (1) of the Political Parties Act prohibits any candidate, political party or person contesting in an election from issuing handouts.
