Malawi: Why Chilima-Chakwera, Not Chilima-Mutharika, Would Have Been the Likely 2025 Ticket
By any measure, Saulos Klaus Chilima was the most disruptive force in Malawian politics in the past decade. He burst onto the scene in 2014 as Peter Mutharika’s running mate, injecting youth, corporate brilliance, and energy into a tired DPP machine. But by 2018, the honeymoon was over. Chilima denounced DPP as corrupt, nepotistic, and unfit to govern — walking away to form the United Transformation Movement (UTM). From that moment, a Chilima-Mutharika reunion became not only improbable, but politically suicidal.
The logic is simple: Chilima’s entire political brand was built on rejecting DPP’s rot. His departure was not quiet — he left with a thunderous denunciation of “cadet politics,” corruption cartels, and exclusion. To imagine him walking back into Mutharika’s arms in 2025 would be to imagine him betraying his own identity and alienating the millions who saw him as the antidote to DPP’s arrogance. In politics, enemies may become allies, yes — but only when there is mutual survival at stake. And let’s be clear: Mutharika’s DPP never offered Chilima survival, only suffocation.
By contrast, Chilima’s partnership with Chakwera was tested, proven, and victorious. The Tonse Alliance of 2020 was not stitched together on paper but forged in the fires of struggle. Together, Chakwera and Chilima overturned the fraudulent 2019 elections in court — a monumental feat in Malawi’s democracy. Together, they mobilized the masses, with Chakwera consolidating MCP’s base while Chilima delivered his one million votes from 2019 and spread Tonse’s appeal into regions that MCP alone could not penetrate. The result? A historic victory that reshaped Malawi’s political map.
Those who downplay Chilima’s role in that victory are either dishonest or blind. Analysts agree that without Chilima’s charisma, oratory, and nationwide youth appeal, the Tonse Alliance would never have unseated Mutharika. His contribution was not auxiliary; it was central. As one voter put it after the 2020 elections: “We voted for Chakwera because Chilima told us to trust him.” That was the level of loyalty Chilima commanded.
Fast forward to 2025. Despite tensions between UTM and MCP supporters, Chilima and Chakwera remained personally cordial until Chilima’s tragic death in 2024. Their working relationship was far from perfect, but politically it made far more sense to renew the Tonse marriage than for Chilima to crawl back to the very party he abandoned. A Chilima-Chakwera ticket would have kept the 2020 coalition intact, preserving the million votes Chilima carried into the alliance. It would have been a rational continuation of a proven formula.
On the other hand, a Chilima-Mutharika combination would have been riddled with contradictions. How does one explain to Malawians that the man who built UTM on an anti-DPP crusade suddenly finds comfort under the same roof? How do you convince the youth, who flocked to him precisely because he rejected Mutharika’s old guard politics, that he has gone back to it? Such a move would not have expanded his base — it would have collapsed it.
Therefore, the truth is stark: had Chilima lived, a Chilima-Chakwera partnership in 2025 would have been far more likely than a Chilima-Mutharika reunion. One was grounded in trust, shared history, and proven victory; the other in betrayal, contradictions, and political suicide. Chilima was too shrewd, too calculating, and too principled to trade the legacy of 2020 for a return to the very swamp he once drained.
History, then, would have remembered Chilima not as a prodigal son of DPP but as the architect of Malawi’s new political order alongside Chakwera. That is the partnership that could have defined 2025.
By Nyasa Times.
