Help the Malawian voter to understand the DPP and UTM alliance 

By Janet Karim

Help the Malawian voter to understand the DPP and UTM alliance

 ² The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’   — Judges 7:2

¹⁴ But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?” – 1 Samuel 15:14

Malawi, like many African countries, has had more than one president; the country currently has three former presidents, and four former vice presidents. To its credit, the country has produced one female Vice President who later became the country’s first female president. It has been a rocky, bumpy, and sometimes frustrating road to travel as Malawians grappled with global economic, political, and sometimes social machinations; add to this natural disasters and global health menaces such as COVID-19, HIV, and bird flu!

Truly, as a country, Malawi is surviving by the grace of God, as my late father used to say!

Recently, in an interview on Malawi Times TV, in an interview on Malawi TV, former President Arthur Peter Mutharika told Times anchor Brian Banda that “there is no perfect leader…” and that the country is beset with numerous challenges, some internal, some natural disasters and others due to the world economic order. These are all very true statements from the seasoned politician, whose background is constitutional law.

While in agreement with these comments, many Malawians stook back, as they watched the picture of him and UTM’s Dalitso Kabambe, talking about an alliance in the forthcoming 2025 elections. Malawians are not new to alliances; there have been many in the past since the demolition of the one-party state and ousting (through the vote) of former Life President Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda. Regrettably, none of them lasted to either the finish line or were they ever renewed.

This does beg the question, what is newly-elected UTM leader DKK doing in a picture with DPP’s APM? Is he perhaps too young to recall the line-up of our past leaders and how they have fared on the political platform in the country? Many people are truly baffled and asking questions. So far, the questions’ bucket is full and the answer bucket almost empty. MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS.

Below, is a rundown of some of the murky waters the country has experienced since the demolition of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) one-party rule from 1963 to 1994. While in 1963, Malawi was fresh coming out of British colonial rule, with a middle-aged voter population, today’s Malawi voting population is 80 percent youth: people that are 40 years old and under.

Let me spoil the ending here: young leaders will everywhere draw out young voters in the same way women draw out the women’s vote when the candidate is a woman; if political parties are not drawing the youth out of the idle fabric and into the voting booths, it is to their chagrin! Below is a background to the questions that are baffling many Malawians, most that lived through the Kamuzu era, others through Bakili, Bingu, and Amai JB, and now the Tonse Alliance that gave Malawi the first dead-in-office-Vice-President memory that has scarred the nation for life!

1. In 2014 SKC joined and added the throng of youthful Malawian voters into DPP, tipping the winning vote against incumbent first female President, AMai Joyce Banda.

2. ⁠VERY SOON, the Mlakho wing of the party very soon despaired of the Ngoni Saulos Chilima and straight caused an entire VP to be sidelined, by his president, in the same manner that Bingu had sidelined his VP JB. Both SKC and JB started their political parties while serving a discontented President.

3. ⁠Thanks be to former first lady, Ambassador Callister Mutharika, who was brave enough to say “aDaddy (DPP’s name for their leader) must not run again, he is too old.” THIS LED TO THE BIRTH OF UTM (that coincidentally elected SKC as its leader). The youthful Malawi was energized and during the year-long whistle-stop campaigns; young Malawians turned out in large numbers. Watching someone that looked like them on the political platform, must definitely have been a powerful treat.

4. ⁠After the 2019 disastrous election robbery, it was UTM’s SKC who challenged APM and MEC in court; he was LATER joined by MCP’s leader, incumbent President Chakwera.

5. ⁠Upon the MAJOR Constitutional Court victory, many of Malawians were encouraged and applauded the alliance of MCP UTM with 8 other political parties joining, and the Tonse Alliance got the 2020 election victory: with the elder Laz as President and younger SKC as VP.

6. True blue in Malawi fashion, members of the MCP section of the government, VERY SOON got tired of the VP, and chants of “Ayimanso!” let the cat out of the bag that LMC and SKC must have had a private agreement (if Laz becomes president first, then SKC will serve in the next 5 years as President. But what was all this bleating about “Ayimanso”?

7. ⁠As has been the case in Malawi, VPs (except for Kachale and Chimulililenji) have not fared well in Malawi’s history. (Chakuamba, Malewezi, Chilumpha, Joyce Banda, and now Saulos Chilima, have all been shunned by their presidents after doing the victory run into the State House.)  June, 10, 2024 bears the ugly scar of such a reality. For 30 years Malawi NEVER HAD A VP. As a nation, Malawians (both leaders and the led) have all these years only shown their love and allegiance to the President; anyone else is sharing a limelight, and all Malawians suspect the VP wants to dim the head honcho’s limelight.

8. ⁠With VP Chilima’s tragic demise, the UTM struggled to find a successor to the brilliant Boy Wonder SKC. STRUGGLED.

9. ⁠Then came an OUTSIDER called Dalitso Kabambe. The paint was yet to dry in his recent casualty from attempts to unseat (the much older) APM. The DPP elected Mutharika, that dude that was too old to contest for the presidency in 2019….. But at the UTM convention delegates outwitted by youth, some heavy male hegemony stuff, and Kabambe swept to the front, and scooped the UTM leadership.

10. ⁠These past two weeks, talks of alliances have been ABLAZE (even though Malawians show disdain for alliance once in power: BUT THIS ONE IS MURKY FROM START TO FINISH. APM and his former competitor Dalitso Kabambe in ALLIANCE TALKS.

10. ⁠I feel like a Rip Van Winkle of sorts. American playwright Washington Irvin tells a story about a man who sleeps for 20 years. HAVE I BEEN ASLEEP THIS LONG?

11. ⁠Who would be the Presidential candidate in this DPP/UTM togetherness bid to unseat the MCP’s President Lazarus Ckakwera? Would APM agree to be a VP to Dalitso Kabambe, after all, it is still the youth (and women) that will tip the winning scales in the September 2025 elections?!

12. ⁠LASTILY, has the UTM been hoodwinked by smarty-pants DPP pundits? Could we be looking at the sophisticated gobbling up of the United Transformation Movement Party?

Something does not ring well. Vote for Joyce Banda. Vote for truth, accountability, and sanity!