Africa-Press – Malawi. Some high levels of deception are going on in opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). At its recent National Governing Council (NGC) meeting in Mangochi, DPP’s top brass endorsed its leader Peter Mutharika to be the party’s torchbearer at the 2025 presidential election.
The 83-year-old Mutharika was “flattered” by the endorsement, a thought-out arrangement he must have already been aware of. Now, in an ideal situation, the endorsement, which some party officials who were present at the NGC meeting say was not done in a democratic manner, in principle implies all those who were seeking to lead the party have been thrust to the periphery.
It must be particularly the case because most of them were there in Mangochi during the meeting where it was also announced that DPP’s elective assembly had been shifted to July next year.
Here are a few issues to look at when analysing the politics that the party’s leadership is playing and why it may dreadfully boomerang: First, the issue of factions has not been addressed in DPP.
There is a team that is behind Mutharika and will do everything possible to protect their interests. They are not necessarily pushing for the former president to stand because they wish the party or this country well; they simply want someone who can easily accept them as his tagalongs.
Or they have played the trick of endorsing Mutharika to systematically deflate those who are planning to compete for the party’s presidency at the elective convention.
The idea could be once front-runners from the other camps got sufficiently dispirited and crushed, the Mutharika faction would then introduce their preferred candidate at which point it would be too late for a competitor to rise again.
But this is bound to create more chaos that would lead to significant divisions in the party ahead of the 2025 elections. The battle in DPP is about who should lead the party and in most cases it is very personal.
There are those who want to settle personal scores from previous encounters and are attempting to use Mutharika to create their desired confusion. It is clear that some of the resolutions that the DPP NGC made in Mangochi, to be adopted in its revised constitution, are aimed at casting out particular individuals.
Bluntly speaking, the party’s Southern Region Vice President Kondwani Nankhumwa and his so-called team were targeted in the revision of some systems. The position of Secretary General, now held by Grezelder Jeffrey,—a typical Nankhumwa sympathiser— will no longer be voted for at a convention.
It is a powerful position in a political party and we saw how Jeffrey, Nankhumwa and company used it to frustrate some of DPP’s attempts to assert power and authority over Nankhumwa.
Mutharika and his handlers are still not happy that Nankhumwa is the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. They made several attempts to replace him with their preferred candidate but it did not work.
So, in the former governing party, the dirty politics continues being played underground. The team that is behind Mutharika seems hell-bent on annihilating Nankhumwa politically and will, therefore, do everything possible to keep him nowhere near the party’s top seat.
That is why they even proposed that positions of regional vice presidents should be abolished. In their minds must have been the assumption that being the DPP’s vice president for the Southern Region is giving Nankhumwa some leverage over some party officials and members.
In essence, this should have been DPP’s earnest rebuilding time, not one for playing dirty political tricks which are only detrimental to the party’s future.
By shifting the elective convention to July next year, just a year before the tripartite elections, the former governing party is not necessary creating room for addressing its problems, but postponing them.
Malawi deserves an organised and strong opposition political block that can competently do its job of providing checks and balances to the government.
So far, DPP has been performing miserably at that. At least, it would have been worthwhile if the party organised itself and turned into a formidable force once again ahead of the 2025 elections. Somehow, Mutharika himself is to blame for the mess in his party. He appears to feel he owns the party and can decide the direction it should take.
Of course, there also are some forces behind him who pull the strings for their own benefits. They are using the old man, who will be 86 the time we go to the next presidential poll, to fight their battles.
For more than once, the former president announced that he would not bounce back after losing in 2020. Today, he feels “flattered” that a scripted endorsement has been declared by his henchmen and “pledges” to look into that.
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