Malawi’s shift to a 50 percent plus one electoral system has made political alliances essential, yet, as Don Napuwa writes, they rarely endure. 

The 2019 Constitutional Court (ConCourt) ruling that annulled the Malawi presidential elections in favour of Lazarus Chakwera and his alliance partner the late Saulos Chilima changed the political landscape of this country forever.

Not only did the landmark ruling call for fresh elections but also that for a presidential candidate to be declared winner, they must amass more than 50 percent of the total votes cast – 50 percent plus one.

Before the ruling, all that was needed for the Electoral Commission to declare the winner was a simple majority, otherwise known as first past the post.

The United Democratic Front (UDF) managed to win the first multiparty elections by a paltry 36 percent of the vote to beat the incumbent Malawi Congress Party (MCP) which ruled the country under a dictatorship for thirty years.

The 2020 fresh polls saw incumbent President Peter Mutharika and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) unseated by a broad opposition alliance led by Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and Saulos Chilima of the UTM, who partnered with seven smaller parties. It was a major upset, especially after Mutharika and the DPP had initially been declared winners in the first round of voting.

However, UTM pulled out of the alliance following the tragic death of its president, Saulos Chilima, in a plane crash in June last year.

Official reports blamed bad weather for the accident, but speculation was rife that the accident was politically motivated. Despite three investigations from the Malawi Defense Force, German manufacturers of the ill-fated aircraft and a government sanctioned commission of inquiry, conspiracy theories have refused to die.

The speculation could be attributed to the poor working relationship that was evident between the president and his vice as alliance partners. Not surprisingly, the office of the vice president in Malawi is some kind of a poisoned chalice. No president has had a cordial working relationship with his or her second in command to the end of their term.

For 30 years, the autocratic Dr. Kamuzu Banda, who led the struggle for political independence from the British, prevailed under a single party system without a vice president.

Banda’s successor, Bakili Muluzi, worked with Justin Malewezi, a career civil servant, as his vice president for two five-year terms only to fallout in the ninth year, largely as a result of succession issues.

The late Malewezi was a Chewa from the central region of Malawi where the MCP draws much of its support from while the UDF power base is in the southern region. The party was therefore not ready to transfer power to the central region.

In spite of his immense experience in government where he headed the civil service as chief secretary to cabinet before joining politics, as well as his loyalty to the party, President Muluzi opted for Bingu wa Mutharika, a rank outsider but a fellow southerner.

Muluzi campaigned vigorously for his anointed successor when he marketed him as “economic engineer” due to his background in economics. Mutharika and running mate Cassim Chilumpha excelled in the 2004 elections with 36 percent of the vote on a UDF ticket but soon fell apart.

Hardly a year into his five-year term, Mutharika resigned from the UDF and established his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), while Chilumpha remained in UDF.

Chilumpha, Muluzi’s fellow Muslim, is believed to have been imposed on Mutharika as a running mate. It was alleged that Chilumpha was not attending cabinet meetings; they said he had constructively resigned from his position. He was later accused of conspiring to assassinate the president and charged with treason. But 20 years on, the cases have not been concluded.

Mutharika picked Joyce Banda as his running mate in the 2009 general elections. They won the elections in a landslide, and everything appeared to be well, but the honeymoon soon ended. Banda was accused of creating parallel structures within the party to prepare herself for the 2014 elections. She was sidelined as vice president and stripped of any power.

Not to be outdone, Banda announced the formation of her own party, People’s Party (PP).

A year down the road in 2012, Mutharika died of cardiac arrest while still in office and Banda and her People’s Party took over the reins of power with the help of the Constitution and military despite some resistance from DPP gurus.

Banda, who was the country’s female president, lost the 2014 general elections to Bingu’s brother, Peter Mutharika of the DPP, largely due the infamous ‘Cashgate Scandal” regarded as the worst form of looting of public resources by civil servants in Malawi’s history.

An estimated K24 billion was stolen from government coffers over a period of two years and cost Banda the presidency.

To win the presidency, Peter Mutharika, an American trained law professor, had teamed up with Saulos Chilima, an economist, who had excelled in the private sector. But in the fourth of their five-year term, Chilima resigned from the DPP but retained his position as vice president before forming his own UTM, first as a movement which later became a party.  

It was rumoured that Mutharika and his youthful vice president had made a gentleman’s agreement that Mutharika serve only one term before handing over the leadership to Chilima. But that agreement was never honored.

Despite an intense nationwide campaign, UTM lost the 2019 elections, and the DPP was declared the winner, until the ConCourt overturned the results and ordered a fresh presidential poll.

The ConCourt ruling followed a legal challenge by UTM’s Chilima and MCP’s Chakwera, who cited widespread irregularities. In the subsequent 2020 election, the DPP was defeated by the Tonse Alliance, a coalition led by MCP and UTM, along with several smaller parties. However, the agreement the alliance partners signed remains a secret.

It is against this background that the forthcoming September 16 elections will be conducted.

With parties currently forming strategic partnerships that could help them cross the 50 percent plus one threshold, it remains to be seen whether political alliances in Malawi can truly work. 

What is known though is that the framers of the Malawi Constitution created the office of the Vice President. The dysfunctional relationship witnessed so far between the presidency and the vice presidency is unfortunate and undermines governance.

If the office of vice president is no longer wanted, then why not abolish it? But as long as it exists, continued conflict between the two undermines the very development the presidency has sworn to deliver for the people. It is also undeniable that parties are exercising caution in deciding who to work with perhaps out of fear of being duped.