President Bingu Wa Mutharika has vowedto handsomely win Malawi's upcoming general elections despite the alliance oftwo biggest opposition parties aimed to wrestle power away from his DemocraticPeople's party (DPP). Former President Bakili Muluzi of the opposition United DemocraticFront (UDF) joined forces with the Malawi Congress Party poses (MCP) after theformer president was disqualified as a presidential candidate. Under thealliance, Muluzi is expected to throw his support behind John Tembo, who is thepresidential candidate of the opposition MCP. But President Mutharika said heis least perturbed about the alliance vowing to overwhelm the opposition in theelections.
Noel Mbowela is a political science professor at the MalawiChancellor College in Zomba. He tells reporter Peter Clottey that theopposition alliance presents a heavy challenge to President Mutharika in thegeneral election.
"The statement is abit controversial and one cannot just take it at face value like that. You willagree with me that the new coalition that has been formed to fight against theruling party, this one of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP and the UDF the twomajor opposition parties in the country is quite formidable. I think now thecontest will be very close and we could as well start saying that it isunpredictable at the moment because the two parties that we are talking abouthave got a large following and also in the most populous areas of the countrythat is the Southern region and the Central region," Mbowela noted.
He said judging by thestrengths of the two opposition parties, it would be a significant challenge forthe ruling party to beat in the upcoming May 19 general election.
"Looking at these facts,what we are saying is that it is no prediction at this moment in time who isgoing to be the outright winner of the election," he said.
Mbowela said the coalitioncould be said to have poked a hole in the latest poll which shows incumbentPresident Mutharika winning the election with 60 percent of total votes.
"Thefigures that people were quoting could make sense or were valid before thecoalition that we are talking about. I think about a month or so ago, thepresident was indeed enjoying popular support. But soon after one of theaspirants who is the former president was stopped from contesting by the MalawiElectoral Commission and now looking at this coalition, I think thosestatistics have been greatly compromised. I think no one can now safely saywith a lot of confidence that the president is going to enjoy that kind ofsupport in terms of winning the elections of 60 percent," Mbowela pointed out.
He said the oppositioncoalition could undermine the expected strong performance of the ruling party.
"The coalition that we aretalking about is quite massive and no one knows really what the outcome of theelection would be like. You would agree with me that these two oppositionparties have great support in many areas and coming together significantlyimproves their chances in the general election," he said.
Mbowela said the coalitionrisks implosion if it wins the elections since the two parties are ideologicallydifferent.
"It is very interesting andmaybe we can even say that the future is not as bright as it looks now. Thesharing of power indeed is one of the aspects that would also I think bringthis coalition to a very unpredictable end. Why? Because you see the twoparties that we are talking about have got two different policies. The otherone is conservative and the other I liberal and also despite the differences interms of political ideologies, the two parties have been enemies so to speak.And they have been operating like cats and dogs since the dawn of democraticdispensation. So, the sharing of power in this case is something that is goingto reopen the kind of fighting and suspicion that has been there between thetwo parties," Mbowela noted.
He said the leaders of thetwo opposition parties could try to outdo each other if their coalitionwrestles power away from incumbent President Mutharika.
"For sure, one can speculatehere that the former President Bakili Muluzi would want to have a bigger partin this coalition, but that could bring other troubles as the presidentialcandidate of the MCP John Tembo would be the president," he said.
The Malawi ElectoralCommission barred Muluzi from participating in the May 19 election and futureelections after he served two consecutive terms as Malawi's president from 1994to 2004 before reluctantly handing over to his handpicked successor Bingu WaMutharika. Muluzi tried unsuccessfully to amend the constitution for him to runfor a third term.