By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Former President of Malawi, Peter Mutharika has been endorsed as the candidate of main opposition party ahead of 2025 presidential election.
The Democratic Progress Party (DPP) picked the former leader of the nation to slug it out with the incumbent President on Sunday.
Mutharika, 84, was President from 2014 to 2020.
Delivering his acceptance speech, he claimed that his party would fix the economy, whose growth has been slow, plagued by foreign currency shortages that led to lack of fuel and medicines.
He will face President Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party, who will be seeking a second term at the election scheduled for September 16, 2025.
“We come from a background of winning from the opposition. We will do the same next year. We are coming to fix the economy,” Mutharika said at the party’s national convention in the commercial capital Blantyre.
Mutharika, a professor of law oversaw infrastructure improvements and reduction in inflation rate during his tenure.
He has however been criticized over alleged corruption and cronyism under him, an allegation he denies.
Chakwera, 69, came to power pledging to crack down on corruption and to accelerate economic growth.
Heritage Times HT however reports that his opponents say he has not delivered in this promise, as the southern African nation’s economy remains fragile.
Mutharika said he would form an opposition alliance including the United Transformation Movement (UTM) the party founded by the late Vice President Saulos Chilima who died in a plane crash in June.
The UTM party was critical in the victory of Chakwera against Mutharika in 2020, but after the demise of its founder and Vice President, it announced its intention to pull out of the ruling alliance.
