When two elephants fight

Everything considered, someone has to own the unending hullaballoo and hotchpotch in the erstwhile governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). And that someone cannot be other than the party’s president Peter Mutharika (APM) himself who, in his own words, said he is the chief executive officer of the party and so “no one should feel more important than anyone”.

Whenever and wherever things go wrong in an entity, it is the integrity of the man on top that is questioned. The question that is asked is: Why did the leadership not act to avert or sanitise the situation? Or why have things been allowed to degenerate to this level?

What we have seen and continue to see in the party is, therefore, because someone who is supposed to steer the party in the right direction and prevent it from falling into a dungeon is sleeping on their job. And it is when things are not happening as they should that rubble rousers emerge to stir up the dust in a whirlwind style.

My view is that the two factions in the party—the pro-Kondwani Nankhumwa, former DPP vice-president for the South, and the one for APM—are both not acting in good faith and do not want to work together. They are both not working in the interest of the party. Consequently, as they say, when two elephants are fighting it is the grass that suffers. The grass in this case is the entity called DPP and all its followers. 

Take Grezelder Jeffrey’s claim, for example.  The former DPP secretary general claims that in keeping with the provision of the DPP’s constitution, she tried to consult the party’s president on the need to call for the national governing council (NGC). But she claims that APM did not respond to all her letters. If, indeed, APM ignored her correspondence to him, then that was unfortunate and would serve to confirm that the APM faction does not want to work with the other faction. But then, in the absence of evidence other than her claim, how could people believe that there was really such correspondence with APM? It, therefore, behoves Jeffrey to prove to all and sundry that APM ignored her communications.

But her faction’s undoing is that having failed to get APM to respond to her communication, she went ahead to call for the NGC. Simply put, she flouted procedures. And that is why her faction’s ‘NGC’ resolutions are invalid. No work done. The lesson to be learnt there is that it is very important to follow procedures however long and winding they may be. It is a measure of intra-party democracy.

That mistake has given the pro APM faction the springboard to triumph.

And following the faction’s successful NGC the stage is now set for the showdown between Nankhumwa and APM. These are the two people in DPP who have so far declared their candidacy for the party’s top position and as its torch bearers in the 2025 presidential elections. After APM’s declaration on Wednesday to vie for the party’s presidency at its elective conference on December 26 and 27, it is highly unlikely that more aspirants from his camp will emerge to contest against him.

For me that is OK as it means all the other DPP officials who previously showed interest to try their luck for the party’s top job are likely to rally behind APM. And so it is now down to numbers in the party’s elective indaba.

All said, the APM faction came out victorious on Wednesday. One small undoing for APM though was to tell outspoken NGC member Ken Msonda that he is not DPP at heart because he was not there when “[former president] Joyce Banda was teargasing them.” In Chichewa there is the adage: Dzimvere mtolo. It is a statement that gives APM entitlement to the party’s leadership than anyone else in DPP. Sadly, the statement perpetuates the founder’s syndrome. This is a cancer that has been sucking the blood and eating the flesh of almost all political parties in the country.

It is this cancer that killed Aford which now has only two seats in the National Assembly from 36 in 1994. It is the same debilitating disease that has also decimated UDF which wrested power from the mighty MCP in 1994 with a whopping 82 legislators of the 177 seats in the National Assembly but now has a paltry 10 in the House.

It will be interesting to see how the next 20 months to the presidential elections will pan out not only in the troubled DPP but also in MCP, UTM and other political parties in the country.