Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: MALAWI’S former President Peter Mutharika has been declared the winner of last week’s elections, in a huge comeback for the 85-year-old.
Official results show that he won 57% of the vote, compared to the 33% of President Lazarus Chakwera, 70, BBC reports. Chakwera, a pastor before entering politics, conceded defeat ahead of the final result being declared, phoning Mutharika to congratulate him on his “historic win”.
Mutharika, a former professor of law, served as president from 2014 to 2020, when he lost to Chakwera by a wide margin.
He inherits an economy that is in deep crisis, with a severe shortage of fuel and foreign currency in the poor southern African state. The official inflation rate is close to 30%.
The 2019 election, also won by Mutharika, was annulled by the country’s highest court, which found there had been widespread irregularities, including the use of correction fluid to alter results. Chakwera won the rerun by a huge margin the following year. This was the pair’s fourth electoral duel.
The latest result can be seen more as a rejection of Chakwera than a victory for Mutharika. Under Chakwera, Malawi’s list of problems just grew too long. Corruption on a grand scale, a weak economy, high living costs, frequent power cuts and a shortage of foreign currency pushed Malawians to look elsewhere for leadership.
Although these same problems existed during Mutharika’s tenure, they worsened under Chakwera. Chakwera’s allies blamed the crisis on factors out of his control, including drought and other natural disasters, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
