State of the race to 2025

The field for the 2025 presidential campaign looks very murky at the moment. In the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), several people are rearing to enter the race for the party’s nomination as torchbearers.

Leader of Opposition Kondwani Nankhumwa has been running for the party’s top job the moment his boss—Arthur Peter Mutharika aka APM—wearily emerged out of the door at Kamuzu Palace after the heavy losses to the Lazarus Chakwera-led Tonse Alliance in the court-sanctioned 2020 presidential polls. He even tries to look presidential and struts himself out as the de facto party leader.

His momentum just got slowed down by his portrayal from the mainstream DPP that he is an impatient power-grabbing wannabe. But his hut is certainly circling around the ring even as he is trying to be a team player.

Former Finance Minister Joseph Mwanamvekha started a methodical grassroots mobilisation campaign, which also sputtered after a steely stare from APM.

Long-serving diplomat and former Cabinet Minister Bright Msaka, who is also DPP vice-president for Eastern Region, is a highly cautious techno-politician.

While he has telegraphed his willingness to offer himself as a presidential candidate for his party in the next presidential election, he has largely kept his cards close to his chest and playing a long, calculating wait-and-see game.

Former Reserve Bank of Malawi Governor Dalitso Kabambe, who many in the party believe is being favoured by the Octogenarian DPP godfather to succeed him, has been taking hesitant baby steps towards positioning himself as a serious contender. But I get the sense that he remains unsure of how to proceed and his lack of hard knuckle political experience does not help him either.

And unlike Nankhumwa, Mwanamvekha and Msaka, who have national name recognitions and have powerful platforms both in the party and in the National Assembly to project themselves from—Kabambe doesn’t really have much of a pulpit to preach from.

So, he has turned to Facebook where his following is pitiful to say the least and his lack of a meaningful foothold in the party’s rank and file, including the National Governing Council and various wings, makes it harder for his presence to be felt.

It certainly puts him at a strong disadvantage.

Despite all these heavy weights clearly indicating that they want to lead the party in the next election, most of them are taking their time, even reluctant, to directly go after APM who still enjoys massive influence over the party’s base, especially in the heartlands of Thyolo, Mulanje, Phalombe, Chiradzulu, parts of the Lower Shire and some areas in the Eastern Region such as Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi.

The former president himself has lately been entertaining what he calls people’s calls for him to stand again.

From what I see, he might just borrow the playbook of former United States of America president Donald Trump who has returned to the campaign trail—and with a lot of success so far if the polls are to be believed—to retake the While House he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020; the same year Mutharika was swept out of Kamuzu Palace by Chakwera.

In the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), there appears to be a universal unwillingness among party bigwigs to challenge their own incumbent even as the party constitution does not allow a person to contest twice on its ticket as President Chakwera has already done.

But the ruling party is likely to grant him the right of first refusal and it appears ready to change the party’s constitution to smoothen the President’s path to re-election.

Of course, Chakwera has not formally declared his candidacy for a second term, but he has not discouraged top party officials from publicly endorsing him for 2025 as the likes of Speaker Catherine Gotani-Hara, who is also first deputy secretary general; second vice-president Harry Mkandawire and Lilongwe-Msinja North legislator Bintony Kutsaira, have done.

In Vice-President Saulos Chilima’s UTM Party, well, nothing appears to be happening. Maybe they will remain MCP’s side-kicks in the splintering Tonse Alliance.

The same inactivity can be found in the United Democratic Front although its former leader Atupele Muluzi seems to be launching an independent presidential bid through some grouping called Friends of Atupele, but which the party of Bakili Muluzi has disowned.

So, as it stands, it looks like the headliners for the 2025 presidential campaign, barring some compelling and countervailing forces, are the same two characters who slugged it out in 2020: incumbent Chakwera and former president Mutharika.

Should that be the case, such a rematch will be for the history books. n