Since losing power in the controversial 2020 presidential election, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been struggling to get the wind back into their sails. There has been one crisis after another – one fight awaiting the next. Power struggle is at the center of their problems and now a year or so before the next general election, they are yet to decide on who will lead the party into that war.
The controversy in the DPP is as a result of one faction within the party stirring the waters for change in leadership. The former vice president for the South, Kondwani Nankhumwa, led this faction, challenging the incumbent president, Peter Mutharika, to call for a convention where he would challenge him for the top position. Mutharika seemed to be reluctant to do this and Nankhumwa and his team took some very drastic measures which ended them in trouble with the party. When the other side reacted, the change instigators rushed to court, but eventually they ended up on their own having to face those they were challenging in a disciplinary hearing.
Some see what has happened to Nankhumwa and his troops as an indication that the DPP has thrown its democratic values to the dogs.
These critics argue that the party is no longer democratic or progressive since it is stifling the democratic rights of some of its members to contest for party leadership and initiative change. They see Mutharika and his army as dictatorial – wanting to micro-manage the party. But others would disagree. The fact that the Nankhumwa camp was able to sing and dance to their own tune within the party shows that they had the freedom to do so. It may just be an indication that the party is democratic.
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Democracy is of such nature that it gives room for almost everything. At the end of the day, one realizes that this system pushes us to the edge where it is the most cunning who survive. As we have heard time and again before, Politics is a game and you ought to know how to play that game. What a democratic dispensation does is to keep everyone as equal chance at participating in that game but whether you win or not melts down to your game plan. Going back to the DPP wrangle, Mutharika and his team seem to have tactically outsmarted their opponents and that does not mean that they are undemocratic. Perhaps this is the reason Nankhumwa and others heeded the call for the disciplinary hearing – it is what it is.
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In 2020, we heard similar cries from Mutharika and his party who claimed that the Tonse Alliance had ‘stolen the government’ from their hands. This was after Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima went to court to challenge the outcome of the 2019 disputed elections. In their minds, the DPP never thought such a challenge would yield any results to their disadvantage. Precedence had it that challenging elections results in Malawi was just a waste of time.
But their opponents played the game differently this time around. They were cunning and they hired very clever lawyers to argue their case. At the end of the day, fresh elections were conducted and the DPP lost. It was politics at play. It was the other side of democracy showing its colors.
In the end, politicians must always be aware that they are involved in a very dirty game where you ought to always be on your feet. Politics in any democratic system is a very risky game that has to be approached with caution. The risk is evident in the lives of our politicians whom we see living in opulence today only to languish in dire poverty tomorrow.
Nothing is guaranteed in politics and one has to tread carefully. As for Nankhumwa and his troops, they chose their course in the DPP and they live to face the consequences of that choice. The fight between the two camps in the party has so far been open and democratic, at least for neutrals.
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It will be interesting to witness how this story ends, bearing in mind that the party has to get its act together for the 2025 election, which is just around the corner.
