The Electoral Commission of Malawi has finally announced that incumbent President Peter Mutharika has been trounced by his opposition challenger Pastor Lazarus Chakwera in Thursday’s presidential elections.
Malawi’s EC chairman Chifundo Kachele announced yesterday that Chakwera under his Tonse Alliance, had won the historic race with a convincing 58.57% margin.
Malawians have a reason to smile ladies and gentlemen. The wait has been long. Despite the intimidation and the keen eye of incumbent Peter Mutharika upon the constitutional court in Malawi, that court stood boldly in February and made a decision no other court except that in Kenya has ever made in Africa.
The court ruled that Peter Mutharika had unfairly won the election held in May 2019.
It was a huge moment in February in Malawi when the same judges perhaps endorsed by Mutharika ordered for a re-run. History has been in Malawi and Africa at large.
Mutharika has fallen in the courts he thought were under his grip.
Malawians are in the streets of Lilongwe and Blantyre and elsewhere celebrating. They should celebrate! The journey has been long. It took unity, calculation and determination.
The Tonse alliance, according to the preliminary results declared by the Malawian Electoral Commission has achieved its goal.
They united against an organized and financially loaded enemy. They have tossed him down. Mutharika is done!
The Tonse alliance brought together main opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera, the head of Malawi Congress Party who came second in the stolen May 2019 poll and Saulos Chilima of United Transformation Movement Party( UTM) who came third, in the poll whose results were later overturned by the extremely independent constitutional court in Malawi.
This alliance had in it nine parties altogether. This bloc was solid enough to send incumbent Mutharika home. What does this mean therefore to the rest of our opposition politicians in Africa? It means unity is strength.
In Uganda, for example, Kizza Besigye has been fighting almost alone for 20 years. This is very wrong. Malawians have spoken.
The selfishness among opposition parties cannot contribute anything to the uprooting of established leaders in Africa.
History has been made in Malawi and on the continent at large. In Kenya, Kenyatta, the incumbent, won the re-run largely due to tribal affiliations and intimidation of the masses. In Malawi it has been a different story.
When the time came for all Malawians to rise up and own again what they rightly owned, their power, even the like Saulos Chilima, Mutharika’s former ally, stood together with the rest without hesitating, to make the country’s perceived greatest obstacle, Peter Mutharika, fall.
Mutharika in Malawi has surely gone. His own friends have started, one by one, disowning him. His press Secretary has already congratulated triumphant Chakwera.
That is what happens when one’s time to go has come. If the court petitioned by Joseph Kabuleta does not rule otherwise, we are likely to vote in 2021.
Political parties trying always to unseat the longest serving president in Uganda’s history have bickered among themselves for years.
None of the parties here believes what has today happened in Malawi can happen here. In politics there is nothing impossible. See where Malawi has reached. No struggle, No progress!
The Mutharika dynasty has fallen. It is up to Peter Mutharika now, to concede completely or to cling on as the majority on the continent often do. I think it is now too late. Peter Mutharika has fought a good fight but he has lost.
The people in Malawi have finally said NO loudly. They said they were fed up in 2019 but Mutharika still believed he was God perhaps.
Ballots can really speak and they are powerful. Peter Mutharika’s fall has been quite slow but it has, completely, happened when he least wanted it. He is in tears. He is bruised allover. People are powerful.
Unity is strength. We hope Lazarus Chakwera while in power does not misbehave like those who came before him did in Malawi. It is time for total resurrection in Malawi.
Bravo to the people of Malawi. The rest of Africa are reading and hearing this resounding record with ears and eyes wide open.
