By Patrick Mwanza

A week after voicing disapproval over UTM’s decision to go it alone in the September 16 general elections instead of forming an alliance with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Newton Kambala has resigned from the party’s Presidential Advisory Council.

His resignation, effective October 16, exactly a month after Malawians went to the polls, triggered UTM’s decision to dissolve the advisory body altogether, a move the party’s secretary general, Willet Karonga, said was aimed at “improving efficiency and strengthening organisational structure.” The party thanked Kambala for his service, noting that “his contributions will not be forgotten.”

But the engineer-turned-entrepreneur was less diplomatic in his own parting words. In his resignation letter, Kambala wrote that the council had failed to give strategic advice to party leader Dalitso Kabambe in the run-up to the polls: “Unfair,” he said, both to the president and to the party itself.

The former energy minister told Times Television’s news show Exclusive about a week ago that he had warned Kabambe months earlier that UTM lacked both money and grassroots structures to compete seriously.

“The votes you can count on come from party structures,” he said. “And we don’t have them.”

He advised Kabambe that the party’s best shot was to align with the DPP, which had the machinery and momentum to unseat the ruling Malawi Congress Party (MCP). “This election year doesn’t favour us,” he recalled saying. “We should be preparing for Kabambe in 2030.”

Kabambe disagreed. “That’s fine,” Kambala said he replied, “but unless someone finds $10 million, it’s impossible to build a campaign.” He told the UTM leader that in the absence of resources, their bid risked damaging the party’s long-term credibility.

The disagreement remained cordial, but the results spoke for themselves. DPP swept the election with 56.7 percent of the vote to MCP’s 33 percent, reclaiming the presidency and expanding its reach from its southern base into the Centre and North. UTM finished a distant third with about 4 percent.

In his resignation letter, Kambala reiterated his loyalty to UTM and said he would continue to support the party’s goals. But his departure leaves a lingering lesson which says strategy and arithmetic often matter more than idealism in Malawi’s restless political arena.

Politics, after all, rewards timing and punishes those who mistake hope for strategy.