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Malawi’s former president, Peter Mutharika, has been re-elected to lead the struggling southern African nation, securing nearly 57 per cent of the vote, as announced by the election authority on Wednesday, following a ballot marked by rising living costs.
President Lazarus Chakwera finished in second place with 33 per cent of the votes in the election held on September 16, according to the electoral commission, which released the results hours after the incumbent acknowledged his defeat, admitting that Mutharika had an “insurmountable lead.”
Supporters of the 85-year-old Mutharika and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took to the streets to celebrate after Chakwera acknowledged in a national address earlier that day that he had failed in his attempt for a second term.
Having served as president from 2014 to 2020, Mutharika campaigned on promises of a “return to proven leadership,” criticising Chakwera’s management of the struggling economy during his administration, which also faced drought and cyclones.
“A moment ago, I called Professor Mutharika directly to congratulate him on his historic victory and to wish him well,” Chakwera said.
Even ahead of the official announcement of results, “it was clear that my main rival Peter Mutharika had already secured an insurmountable lead over me,” said Chakwera, 70, a former pastor who heads the Malawi Congress Party (MCP).
The charismatic Chakwera came to power after the 2020 elections, which ended Mutharika’s first term; Mutharika, a reserved constitutional law expert, spent many years outside Malawi, including time as a law professor in Washington.
During Mutharika’s leadership, costs surged in the agriculture-dependent country, with inflation hitting 33 per cent and prices for maize, the staple food, and fertiliser skyrocketing. He also fell short of his commitments to create a million jobs and address corruption in a nation of 21 million people, where over 70 per cent of the population lives in poverty, as reported by the World Bank.
As soon as results began arriving from polling places last week, unofficial counts reported by local media indicated that Mutharika, affectionately called “father” by his supporters, had a significant lead.
The Malawi Congress Party (MCP), the country’s oldest political party, claimed to possess evidence of voting irregularities, including discrepancies in tallies and allegations of ballot stuffing. Chakwera appealed to the High Court on Tuesday to compel the Malawi Electoral Commission to postpone the results, but the request was denied.
