Tonse cracks widen ahead of 2025 elections

 Hope that Tonse Alliance partners will operate on the same wavelength ahead of the 2025 General Elections continues to fade as infighting deepens.

Recent sentiments of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president Enock Chihana that President Lazarus Chakwera and Vice-President Saulos Chilima are to blame for Malawians’ hardships and economic woes is an example that the partners no longer speak the same language.

Chihana further said the alliance only existed on paper, claiming parties in the grouping

 do not work together on the ground.

His sentiments echoed what the alliance spokesperson Kamuzu Chibambo said at a press briefing his People’s Transformation Party (Petra) held in Blantyre last year.

More recently, Malawi Congress Party (MCP) officials engaged in verbal fights with UTM Party on who will lead the alliance in 2025 with senior MCP members calling for Chakwera to be the torch-bearer.

For instance, at a rally in Nkhotakota last week MCP youth director Richard Chimwendo Banda said they were strategising to have Chakwera on the ballot in 2025.

 The party’s deputy secretary general Catherine Gotani Hara, who is also Speaker of the National Assembly, made similar sentiments at an MCP fundraising event last year.

But when asked if this is the position of the party, MCP spokesperson the Reverend Maurice Munthali said the Tonse Alliance did not come to strangle the powers, choices, and ambitions of any political party.

In response to our questionnaire, which was apparently leaked on social media by MCP insiders, Munthali said all parties in the alliance are free to equally pursue their dreams and choices ahead of the 2025 General Elections.

He said: “The party will make its official position regarding the party’s presidential candidate when we meet at our forthcoming convention whose date will be announced in due course.”

Soon after being implicated in Zunneth Satter corruption case, Chilima on July 1 2022 alleged that he agreed with Chakwera that he will lead for one term.

At a press briefing in Lilongwe, the Veep said the political alliance agreement was for 10 years, in which Chakwera and himself are expected to support each other to lead for a term each.

But our efforts to speak to UTM Party secretary general Patricia Kaliati and newly

appointed spokesperson Felix Njawala on recent developments proved futile as they could not be reached.

Governance commentator Mavuto Bamusi claims that all these dynamics will negatively impact the 2025 elections and take away the inclusiveness and broad-based platform for representation and expressions of people’s political will.

Bamusi said: “Unwillingness to make public the contents of the Tonse Alliance agreement also reveals the intent towards secrecy which is the main source of power struggle and dissatisfaction over distribution of key public positions.”

He was seemingly referring to the pact Chilima claimed to have made with Chakwera prior to the June 23 2020 court-sanctioned Fresh Presidential Election that the President will only lead the alliance for a term to pave the way for him to be its torch-bearer in 2025.

Bamusi argued that all these political antics mean alliances are just platforms to advance greedy and selfish interests of politicians.

He described the Tonse Alliance as a marriage of convenience to trap voters into promises which were abandoned once it was voted into power.

Mzuzu University-based political analyst Chrispin Mphande said in a separate interview that the ongoing squabbles are dangerous to the smooth running of the country.

“It will no longer be about serving the nation, but personal interests because even some appointments will be made simply as rewards and not out of merit as stipulated in the public sector reforms,” he said.

Mphande said what has led to the current squabbles is the alliance’s lack of governance strategy after ousting the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

However, he said those speaking against the alliance leadership while remaining in the fold are doing so out of frustration that they have not been rewarded as they expected.

Politician-cum-analyst Humphrey Mvula with Chakwera standing a greater chance of leading the alliance in 2025, if it remains intact, chances are that Chilima will partner either the DPP or the United Democratic Front (UDF)