During his presidential address yesterday that left one Agriculture minister Lobin Lowe shedding tears and a Minister of Lands, Sam Kawale, being promoted to Agriculture Minister, President Chakwera hinted that his close partner in the Tonse Alliance is colluding with corrupt individuals to sponsor demonstratuions organized by renowned agents of UTM (a member of the alliance) and the opposition DPP.
Chilima has been consistent in his efforts aimed at engineering demonstrations against the government with a calculation that the regime would be demolished and leave him standing in the place of the president.
Chilima, who is having a Sattar-related corruption scandal hanging on his head and is unlikely to qualify for presidential candidacy in the 2025 election, has been reportedly bankrolling dissidents tasked with a role of stepping up demonstrations against the Chakwera-led regime in which he is the State Vice President after Chakwera picked him as running mate in the victorious 2020 presidential election.
Succeeding the victory that was registered in 2020, debate on whether Chilima is an eligible presidential candidate in the 2025 presidential election re-surfaced, with prominent legal nodes including the Malawi Law Society re-emphasizing the status of 2009 Muluzi case as the current position of the law, in which one who has served for two consecutive terms either as a president or vice president is not eligible for vying for any office in the Presidency.
Following this incident coupled with the Sattar-corruption scandal, the distressed Chilima convened a Press Briefing aimed at addressing his views. In that address, Chilima informed the nation that he is banking on a gentleman’s agreement which he and Chakwera made ahead of the 2020 presidential polls. He revealed that according to their agreement, Chakwera is to endorse Chilima in the 2025 presidential election, an arrangement which most political and legal commentators have trashed and excluded any substance from.
As if daunted by the fact that his candidacy is in serious jeopardy, Chilima is on a relentless underground task of inciting demonstrations through his cronies such as Bon Kalindo and, recently, Chisa Mbele who have jointly aligned demonstrations later this month.
In his short loaded remark about the demonstrations, the president highlighted that he is aware of who is behind the demonstrations. “I am here to serve Malawians and I will do so no matter who tries to intimidate me by colluding with corrupt individuals to sponsor demonstrations. And I know that our efforts will succeed, because most Malawians know that we will deliver,” he said.
