As the country draws closer to the 2025 Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections, one question that keeps popping up in offices, churches, mosques, minibuses, bars and many public places is who will win the presidential race.
Without fear of contradiction, President Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera will win the elections with a clear percentage contesting on the Malawi Congress party (MCP) ticket.
Here are the reasons why President Chakwera will definitely and convincingly win the elections in 2025.
I have said several times that MCP is a conservative party and as such, it is very difficult to shake its support base. Since MCP is not a populist party, it is easy for opponents to write it off on paper.
When it became apparent that veteran politician and long-time serving senior MCP member, John Tembo was retiring from the partys leadership position, the opponents thought that was the end of the oldest party.
Little did political opponents know that was the birth of a renewed and transformed Malawi Congress Party. The opponents did not see President Chakwera coming with a new philosophy.
At the time some senior members of MCP rebelled against the leadership, some people thought the end of MCP had come; little did they know that the party was undergoing a cleansing process and that it will emerge even stronger.
There are many examples of turbulent experiences that the MCP has gone through and political opponents celebrated thinking the party will finish like curtains only to amass many parliamentary seats in the 2019 elections and win the 2020 fresh presidential elections.
As already alluded to, MCP is not a populist party and therefore, it does not make noise about its strength as the largest political party with permanent structures across the country.
Under the leadership of President Chakwera, several big development projects have mushroomed and others completed. The fact that these are not highly publicized on various media platforms does not mean Malawians are not aware of them.
The development projects are taking place right in the communities where voters live. These developments such as roads, railways, hospitals, schools, houses for security agencies, and water projects in Karonga and Mangochi just to mention a few, are visible and are serving people.
It is obvious that the country is going through some challenges and they are not unique to Malawi.
President Chakwera took the government at a very difficult time when the world was under siege with the Covid-19 pandemic. As this was not enough problem, Malawi was attacked by tropical cyclones Ana and Gombe.
The war in Ukraine has not helped matters as prices for essential goods and services have gone up. Tropical Cyclone Freddy has caused the worst devastation in Malawi and preliminary assessment shows that full recovery will require millions of US dollars.
However, despite all these challenges, the Chakwera administration is delivering. Lilongwe City is a construction site, the M1 Road is under reconstruction, the railway line rehabilitated in Nsanje and Zomba Central Hospital has been renovated.
The crowd that flocked the Kasungu Township to watch the tarring of the municipality’s road is a clear testament that under Chakwera, Malawians are experiencing new things.
Nonetheless, the absence of bragging by the MCP does not make the party or Chakwera unpopular. From where I am standing, I do not see any candidate snatching the presidency from Chakwera in 2025.
