Too much heat in DPP ahead of 2025

Folks, There has been a lot of political turmoil in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in anticipation of the 2025 elections.

On Wednesday last week, a faction that supports DPP vice-president (South) Kondwani Nankhumwa led by controversial DPP secretary general Grezelder Jeffrey held a meeting touted as an ‘NGC’ gathering at Golden Peacock Hotel in Lilongwe and declared that the party’s convention would take place on December 15 or 16 in Lilongwe.

However, the opposing camp loyal to party leader Peter Arthur Mutharika, did not attend the meeting and branded the Nankhumwa-led faction as rebels. Mutharika later issued a statement to congratulate all DPP NGC members who did not attend the meeting and nullified the resolution by the Nankhumwa-led faction.

He further nullified Wednesday’s resolution by the group announced by the interim chairperson Cecilia Chazama to hold the convention on December 15 or 16. The meeting also elected Mwanza Central DPP legislator Nicholas Dausi as chairperson of the December convention and Baxter Kita as his deputy.

 Obviously, many genuine DPP supporters and followers are disappointed with the turn of events in the party that wants to wrest back power from the MCP government come 2025, but just like some of us, some in DPP are definitely not surprised by these happenings and the infighting still remains a time bomb that may explode at a later date if the opposing sides do not iron out their differences with sober minds.

Of course, now there is a ray of hope following the successful hosting of an NGC meeting by Mutharika in Mangochi this week.

But events between the party’s warring factions remain worth following to their logical conclusion with the Mutharika NGC scheduling the party’s  long-awaited convention for next week [December  26-27] and Nankhumwa announcing that he will attend the elective conference.

By the way, people started cautioning the DPP to tread carefully on the emerging ‘camps’ within the party just before the court-sanctioned fresh presidential election in June 2020 that saw Mutharika losing the presidency to Lazarus Chakwera of MCP.

I also recall that on his return from the United Kingdom, where he attended the First UK-Africa Investment Forum before he left office, Mutharika, for the first time, publicly confirmed long standing speculations that divisions were emerging in his party following his ouster over three years ago.

The divisions followed moves by some party officials to start canvassing to succeed the old man as they hoped he would not stand again in the next elections.

Sadly, many people think that three years after confirming divisions in the DPP NGC, Mutharika has not done enough to end the squabbles. Of course, the DPP leader cannot and must never take all the blame alone because we know for a fact that he is dealing with elements in his party who are deeply motivated to rule the party as soon as yesterday. But whether those ‘rebels’ can steer the party to an election victory in 2025 is a topic for another day.

Of course, there are four or five camps canvassing to take over from Mutharika, but only these two are prominent and the DPP needs to handle the differences systematically and internally than washing dirty linen in public.

This infighting within the DPP has been ongoing for some time and has the potential to negatively affect the party’s chances in the 2025 elections. Many DPP supporters are already disappointed with the party’s inability to address the internal divisions in a constructive manner and my fear is they might get disenfranchised in 2025.