PERSPECTIVE | Patrick Mwanza
Power has a predictable side effect: it convinces those who hold it that they are untouchable and those who lose it that they are victims.
The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) is learning this the hard way. Its fall from power last year has been followed by loud protests of persecution, as if losing an election also granted immunity from scrutiny. It doesn’t.
Opposition is never comfortable. It strips away influence, exposes internal fractures and removes the protection that office provides. For MCP, the transition has been especially jarring, made worse by its insistence that it is being singled out rather than held to account.
That argument is difficult to sustain.
This is a party Malawians once rejected for as long as it ruled them: 30 years in power, followed by 30 years in exile. When MCP finally returned to office, it was given not just authority but goodwill, a rare and fragile political currency. It required humility, restraint and a clear understanding that second chances are not extended lightly. MCP behaved as though voters would wait.
They didn’t.
History has a habit of repeating itself. In 2014, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was reeling after the death of its founder and sitting president, Bingu wa Mutharika. His passing mid-term plunged the party into confusion and denial. Constitutionally, Vice President Joyce Banda was the rightful successor. Politically, the DPP refused to accept her.
The party tried to block Banda’s ascent. It failed. There was only one lawful path forward, and Banda occupied it.
She assumed office buoyed by public goodwill. That goodwill collapsed under the weight of Cashgate, a scandal that exposed the siphoning of millions of kwacha from the treasury for no work done. At the time the figures shocked the nation. Today, they would be counted in billions.
Still, DPP’s road back to power in 2014 was anything but smooth. Under Peter Mutharika’s leadership, the party made a calculated move by courting Saulosi Chilima, a private-sector figure whose marketing instincts helped rehabilitate a battered political brand.
But the cracks were already visible. After its emphatic 2009 victory, DPP’s image shifted. It began to look arrogant and increasingly nepotistic. Bingu appeared more invested in shaping his personal legacy than safeguarding national stability, preferring his brother as successor over his constitutionally mandated vice president.
Joyce Banda, it must be said, contributed to her own political end. The People’s Party misread the mood of the electorate and failed to secure a fresh mandate in 2014. Five years later, in 2019, the opposition successfully challenged DPP’s electoral victory in court. Chilima teamed up with MCP, the once-discarded cornerstone, and together they prevailed. DPP lost. MCP returned to power.
But if DPP failed to learn in 2019 that elections aren’t blank cheques, MCP repeated the same mistake. Power has a way of intoxicating quickly. Arrogance sets in. Listening stops. Dissent is dismissed.
DPP can argue, with some justification, that it lost the 2019 elections on a technicality: the now infamous use of correction fluid. It can’t argue away the decisive defeat that followed in the court-ordered re-run. MCP’s margin of loss in 2025 reflected something deeper than procedural fatigue. It reflected judgment.
Which brings us to the present.
When MCP now cries political witch-hunt as the governing DPP pursues corruption cases against former MCP officials, the claim rings hollow. It sounds less like a defense of principle and more like an attempt to intimidate. That mindset was laid bare when MCP spokesperson Jessie Kabwila squared off against her DPP counterpart, Shadreck Namalonda, on Times Radio.
Kabwila’s underlying argument appears to suggest that power is cyclical, and today’s rulers should tread carefully because tomorrow they may sit on the other side of the table.
That’s not accountability. It’s blackmail.
What if some MCP officials who occupied the highest offices did, in fact, commit acts worthy of investigation? Should the state look away in the name of political balance? Should corruption be tolerated simply because the wheel of power eventually turns?
If that logic holds, then the rule of law ceases to be what it ought to be all the time.
President Peter Mutharika knows — or should know — that his return to office isn’t a full endorsement of either his record or his party’s past conduct. During the campaign, he promised to remake Malawi in the image of advanced economies. Reform is demonstrated in action, discipline and institutional memory.
If Kabwila’s critique of DPP’s conduct is sincere, then there is value in learning from past mistakes. One would hope the party has subjected itself to an honest internal reckoning. And even if MCP believes it has little to answer for after five years in power, it should take comfort in one enduring truth: Malawian voters are patient, but they are also fair, and they remember.
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