UTM, get out of cocoon
Congratulations to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for its successful elective convention which sealed the prospect of Peter Mutharika as the party’s torch bearer in next year’s elections facing Malawi Congress Party’s Lazarus Chakwera.
Save for one ugly incident—some overzealous party supporters threatened Nation Publications Limited team covering the convention to delete a Facebook news update on what was happening at the convention. This was totally uncalled for and should never happen in this age and era which holds media freedom and the right for people to know in high esteem. After the two big political parties have held their elective indabas all eyes are now on the UTM Party and the United Democratic Front (UDF) to follow suit. This is after another political party—the People’s Party—led by former president Joyce Banda announced this week that it will hold its elective convention on September 7, 2024.
But unlike UDF and PP, UTM has so much to write home about. This is because the party was the strongest kingmaker in the July 23 2020 court-sanctioned fresh presidential elections and MCP’s strongest partner in the Tonse Alliance administration. And after UTM announced that it had exited the alliance, the controversy continues because several senior UTM members are still in government and mathematically the party is split into two factions with high chances that the status quo will remain until September 16 2025 when the country will hold general elections.
However, from the look of things, UTM is far from being ready for a convention. This is understandable. The death of the party’s leader Saulos Klaus Chilima on June 10 2024 completely paralysed the party. Cruel death robbed UTM in a way the party may never recover to its original state. What is now evident in the entity two months after Chilima’s death in a plane crash in Chikangawa together with eight others, are clear signs of an entity that is a target of two vultures that are ruthlessly headed to share its spoils. Suffice to say the vultures could actually be the ones fuelling the feud in the party.
And so there are two factions in the party— the pro-government one headed by Vice- President Michael Usi and the other led by the party’s secretary general Patricia Kaliati. Long short, there is a leadership crisis in UTM which, in the long term, is destined to split its membership base. The latter group does not recognise Usi as the party’s leader.
It is the reason the Kaliati’s faction is behaving like a festering wound. Not wanting to respond to any medication. And, this is also why the faction is trying to gain sympathy from perpetually holding memorial rallies for its fallen leader. Again not wanting to get itself out of the self-pity mood. There is nothing wrong with holding a memorial for a departed beloved member of the family. But this faction of UTM has turned the memorials into a political campaign and in my view the memorials originally meant to be mourning sessions for the party’s fallen leader, have now lost sense. It is time UTM got out of its ‘mourning’ cocoon and started strategizing for a rebuilding programme in earnest. Time is not on its side. Talking about UTM holding an elective convention, I don’t see the party doing so soon. As expected, the factions are jostling and consolidating support for their respective leaders. This week, the Usi faction claimed that the UTM officials in the North fully support him as the party’s leader. My take is that the faction that does not have confidence to garner enough votes for its leader at the convention will resist holding one soon.
