By Joseph Dumbula
Malawi’s main opposition, the Democratic Progress Party, has formally endorsed former President Peter Mutharika, 84, as its candidate for the 2025 presidential election.
Mutharika, who led the country from 2014 to 2020, pledged to fix the economy, which has struggled with slow growth and currency shortages.
He will face incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera, who is seeking a second term.
The legal mind also plans to create allies with the United Transformation Movement, the party founded by the late Vice President Saulos, the United Democratic Front and the Aford in a move widely thought to mark levels in the 50+1 threshold requirement.
The UTM party helped Chakwera defeat Mutharika in 2020, but after the vice president’s death it announced its intention to pull out of the ruling alliance
“We come from a background of winning from the opposition. We will do the same next year. We are coming to fix the economy,” Mutharika said.
He mentioned increased cost of living, slow and weak interventions to food insecurity during lean season, what he called “economic mismanagement and selective justice in fighting corruption as some of the failures of the Tonse Alliance administration led by Chakwera.
In 2020, Mutharika lost his re-election bid to Chakwera, whose Malawi Congress Party partnered with other nine political parties.
The election was a repeat vote after the country’s top court quashed the results of the May 2019 exercise which gave Mutharika the DPP a win.
In 2021 Mutharika accused the current government of politically prosecuting him.
Some of the winners at the convention are former finance minister Joseph Mwanamvekha who won as Vice President for the South and Mutharika’s aide Norman Chisale who is now the Director of Youth.
Malawians head to the polls on 16th September next year, to vote for Ward Councilors, Members of Parliament and a President, a poll whose due processes have been legally launched.
