By Abdul Tejan-Cole
On Saturday, June 27, Lazarus resurrected again. Many would recall the story recounted in the holy Bible in John 11:1-44 about how Jesus Christ raised Lazarus of Bethany from the dead four days after he had been buried in a tomb. One of his modern day namesakes, Prof. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, completed a great comeback to emerge as the winner of Malawi’s Presidential elections defeating incumbent President, Peter Arthur Mutharika.
The story started on May 21, 2019, when Malawians voted in tripartite polls to elect a President, members of the National Assembly, and Local Government Councillors. Ten candidates contested the Presidential elections. Following a heated campaign, incumbent President Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was declared the winner with 1,940,709 or 38.57% of the vote. Prof. Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party, the party of the country’s first leader, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, finished second with 1,781,740 (35.41%), a difference of 158,969 votes between the top two candidates. The young, vibrant and highly fancied, Saulos Klaus Chilima of the United Transformation Movement (UTM), and who was Mutharika’s running mate in the May 2014 Presidential elections and Vice President of Malawi before his fall out with Mutharika, finished a distant third with 1,018,369 (20.24%).
Lazarus Chakwera’s MCP and Chilima’s UTM took their electoral fraud case to Malawi’s Constitutional Court. On February 3, 2020, the Constitutional Court of Malawi delivered a landmark decision nullifying the May 2019 Presidential elections and held “that first respondent (Peter Mutharika) was not duly elected as President of Malawi. As a result, we hereby order nullification of the elections. We further order that a fresh election be held in accordance with the law and pursuant to directions we will make.” Mutharika lost again in the Supreme Court, and as a result, fresh elections were held.
And so on June 23, a rerun election was held. On June 27, the Malawi Electoral Commission declared Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party, the winner with 2,604,043 votes representing 59.34% of votes cast. Incumbent Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party polled 1,751,877 with 39.92% of the votes. Thereby completing the resurrection of Lazarus from the political dead. He was sworn into office as Malawi’s sixth President on June 28th.
As a result of this election, Malawi became the first country in Africa where the opposition won a presidential election rerun. In August 2017, Kenya became the first country in the continent whose Supreme Court annulled its elections. However, the Kenyan opposition boycotted the rerun, and as a result, Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent, won the rerun.
Many renowned Malawians have advanced several reasons for what happened in the country in the past year that led to the resurrection of Lazarus Chakwera Chakwera. Let me borrow some that I think made a difference. First, the opposition was united. President Lazarus Chakwera and his new Vice President, Saulos Chilima, who was 3rd in the May 2019 elections, came together as a united front to form the Tonse Alliance. The younger Chilima, who had served as Vice President under Muthraika before they fell out, did not say he did not want to serve as VP again. He put his ego aside and took the second slot on the ticket.
According to Malawian historian, Prof Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, the election result showed that despite the power of incumbency that was ruthlessly exploited by the DPP government, an organized, disciplined, and smart opposition can win. The Alliance ran an effective and dynamic campaign that was digitally savvy and took the fight to the ruling party. In uniting and running an effective campaign, they sent a powerful message to opposition parties across Africa – if you want to defeat a powerful incumbent – work together.
Important also was what Prof Zeleza termed “the emergence of a fiercely independent judiciary that refused to be intimidated by the executive branch in the country’s tripartite system of government.” The Constitutional Court boldly and unanimously cancelled the May 2019 elections. Their decision was upheld by the Supreme Court on May 8, 2020. Prof Zeleza notes that in “their deliberations the courts demonstrated admirable, methodical and brilliant jurisprudence. Most critical was the ruling that the winner in presidential elections should amass over 50% of the valid votes cast. At a stroke, a fatal dagger was struck at the heart of regional and ethnic politics, of the DPP’s electoral shenanigans, for no party could any longer win by only mobilizing its base.” A few days before the elections, President Mutharika’s government announced that Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda had been placed on leave pending retirement with immediate effect. They claimed he had accumulated more leave days than the remainder of his working days until his retirement due in December 2021. This move provoked outrage and led to a demonstration and a subsequent application by the Malawi Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC), the Association of Magistrates, and the Malawi Law Society to block the move.
Much of the blame for the May 2019 farcical election was heaped on Jane Ansah, the former head of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC). As a result of her dismal performance, she was declared incompetent by the Constitutional Court and by Parliament and so had to vacate the office. A new Electoral Commission was set up. The “relatively young, dynamic, and incorruptible” chairperson, Chifundo Kachale, a High Court and former journalist, took the helm. By most accounts, he conducted the most credible election in Malawi’s history since the first post-independence multi-party elections of 1994. Although there were few technical glitches, they were said to be very transparent. The Dean of Faculty of Law at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Dr. Sunduzwayo Madise, credited Kachale for his leadership at the Commission noting that “Justice Dr. Kachale has demystified the Electoral Commission chairmanship, making complex things simple is a mark of a genius.” Prof Zeleza further states that “Unlike before, the election results were announced at each polling station and broadcast live to an anxious nation. People, including school children, could add the math. Kachale has made the job look like a piece of cake; it was not. He has discharged the most challenging job in the country since 1994 with utmost competence and with unparalleled commitment, diligence and due care. Transparency was key to his methodology and now he’s left with mopping up to complete a job well done. He’s written himself into the annals of Malawian history as a rare statesman.”
Another incredible aspect of the election is that as a result of the COVID19 pandemic, they were held without any international observers. These bodies were blamed for endorsing the May 2019 elections. According to Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa, Dean of the Law School at the University of Cape Town, “Malawians were left to their own devices to claim and defend their right to vote. They did this through a protracted but step-by-step effort involving many actors, each playing an indispensable role.” The H. Laddie Montague Chair in Law at Pennsylvania State University School of Law, Prof Tiyanjana Maluwa, pointed out, “We don't need foreign election observers to help us conduct a credible election. Indeed the foreign observers, with their formulaic verdicts ("the election was free and fair and generally reflected the will of the peoples...") were utterly rebuked by the very fact that the courts nullified the fraudulent presidential election that they had all praised for its fairness.” By all accounts, Malawi’s domestic observers performed admirably in safeguarding the votes thus highlighting that although they are usually neglected and underemphasized, they play a vital role in ensuring transparency. As Prof. Thomas Carothers puts it they can “can deliver much more "bang for the buck" than can foreign groups, given that their travel, accommodation, and other logistical costs are much lower.”
In addition, the election was conducted without foreign funding. As Zeleza noted, “Malawi relied on its own admittedly depleted budget spurning the ubiquitous “donor support” that the arrogant purveyors of the mercy industrial complex wave to so many supplicant African governments to conduct one of the most basic functions of sovereignty—elections.”
But by far, the most significant factor in my view is what Prof. Zeleza describes as “the professionalism of the military.” He further explained that since independence and at crucial moments, they have consistently maintained loyalty to the Constitution of the Republic, not the President as Commander-in-Chief. They did so in 1992 during the referendum on multi-party democracy and in the subsequent two years. Similarly, in 2012 they facilitated the ascendancy of the estranged Vice President, Joyce Banda, when a DPP cabal led by the recently defeated president, Peter Mutharika, were planning an unconstitutional takeover. Since the annulment of the election in 2019 till the rerun they provided security for peaceful protests. And the moment it became clear that Dr. Chakwera was the incoming president they beefed up state security for him.” Even when President Mutharika fired the popular army commander General Vincent Nundwe, and his deputy Clement Namangale, and replaced them with those he thought were his allies, the military remained steadfast in defence of the rule of law.
People’s power won in Malawi. Many are not celebrating the victory of the Chakwera-Chilima alliance but the defeat of the Mutharika dynasty. Peter Mutharika’s older brother, Bingu wa Mutharika, was President from May 29, 2004, until his death on April 5, 2012. Although there was a brief interval in which Vice President, Joyce Banda, served as President, Peter Mutharika became President on May 31, 2014, and ruled until he was defeated last week. The Mutharika dynasty was characterized by a declining economy, eroding human rights, intolerant of criticism, tribalism and regionalism, as well as several corruption allegations. The country has had many false starts. Most Malawians will be hopeful that this is not another one and that Lazarus Chakwera will, unlike other leaders, deliver development, curtail poverty, address tribalism, regionalism and marginalization and significantly not allow his deeply religious beliefs to undermine the rights of women, girls and other minorities.
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