It has been two weeks since we lost Vice President Saulos Chilima. The government dedicated 21 days of mourning for the United Transformation Movement (UTM) leader, but it seems that tears will continue to flow even after that period elapses. Some have argued that Chilima is perhaps the most mourned public figure in the history of our nation. This is not surprising at all, considering the tragic nature of his death and the fact that he was still relatively young and one of the most ambitious people in our political circles. He has to be mourned.
However, life has to go on and, indeed, we have seen things going on. As we speak, the departed leader has been replaced and we now have a new Vice President in the name of Right Honorable Michael Usi. Considering the political situation on the ground, the choice of Usi for the position is not surprising and it is the safest choice that the President would have made. While the UTM and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) have been in an alliance since 2020, their marriage has not been smooth. It has been tainted with suspicion, distrust and conspiracies. And the tragic accident that claimed Chilima’s life could not have come at a worse time. As such, opting for Chilima’s vice to replace him was politically prudent.
What is interesting though is the reaction of some UTM members to Usi’s ascension. While we expected huge support for Usi from the party’s top dogs, some big names were missing at his inauguration ceremony at Parliament Building last week. When asked on their whereabouts, some of them said that they were late for the event and others were attending to some other business. While their excuses may be sincere, a lot of people are still raising eyebrows as to what this may foretell about the future of the party.
In Malawi, infighting within political parties is not a new thing. Politics is about power and many are men and women hungry for power. This is why almost every politician is suspicious about the intentions of the other. As a result, we have politicians fighting all the time. Currently, there are competing factions in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and their battles have seen some top gurus being ousted from the party. Rumour also has it that the terrain is not all that smooth in the MCP. There are competing factions there, and only time will tell. Understanding this, we would not be surprised if we heard that there is infighting in the UTM.
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But unlike the other big parties who have the luxury to disagree, those in the UTM must understand that they are in a very precarious situation political wise. As a party, their cornerstone was Saulos Chilima, and for neutrals, it is very difficult to imagine the future of UTM without him. Chilima authored this party into existence and he even mastered the political script of this country. He was so cunning that he planned his next moves very carefully and rarely acted out of emotions. Now that the author is no longer there, who else can take up the script and rewrite a future that is plausible and sustainable for the party? This is the reason one would argue that the UTM has no luxury for infighting, whatsoever. Its leadership must be thinking of what they must do to remain relevant in Malawi’s political arena.
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As already highlighted, it is not easy for one to imagine a political future for UTM in the absence of Chilima. Those who are mourning him are doing so because of his individual charm and charisma. The more than one million people who voted for him in the 2019 election did so for the same reasons. Very few people, if any, voted for Chilima because he was representing UTM. The fact that the party did not even get a handful of members of Parliament despite its leader coming third with votes that were very close to those of the top two should tell you that it was more about the individual than the party. Understanding this, UTM members have a mountain to climb and they cannot scale that mountain when some of them are late or busy with some other business.
