Alliances: Who has attractive campaign messages for Malawi swing voters?

The campaign season for the July 2 [or June 23]  Fresh President Elections is in full swing and, already, daggers are drawn.

It’s a war of two alliances, each with a strong base of voters but to win these elections, the battle comes down to swing voters.

Both alliances have an election to win or lose because, counting on their traditional voters, the figures look pretty good; that is why the alliance that will sway more swing voters to its fold, is the one with the greatest advantage of carting victory home.

Ordinarily, Malawi’s swing vote is predominantly the Northern Region vote  and, of course, the urban vote. These voters are always moved or swayed by campaign messages and visible development projects. Not tribe.

This is why, at the point in time, it is critical to ask: Between  opposition Tonse Alliance and  governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and United Democratic Front (UDF) alliance, which group, so far, is churning out attractive campaign messages that can sway swing voters to their fold?

Is it yet not clear, at this stage of the campaign, to decode what, actually, Tonse Alliance is standing for; or what UDF/DPP is standing for.

However, from the key messages coming from the campaign trails, it is, somehow, becoming a bit simpler to tell the principles underlining what these two parties are advancing.

For instance, Tonse Alliance appears poised to dismantle the political hegemony of two families—Mutharika and Muluzi—which has bestride the countries’ politics since the advent of multi-party democracy in 1994.

To them, the dominance of these two families is the reason Malawi is failing because these families have been running Malawi as their personal farm.

They advance that the experience this family runs in matters is negligible and should not be tolerated because there is nothing substantially developmental in it.

In other words, the gist of Tonse Alliance’s appeal message is the flaws of their rivals—we haven’t heard much in terms of what, themselves, can do.

The UDF/DPP alliance, with Atupele Muluzi on the frontlines, is mostly towing the ‘experience’ to discredit both  opposition leaders  Lazarus Chakwera and  Saulos Chilima as amateurs in state craft.

To them, Chakwera is an aged kid in matters of running State affairs and giving him power is akin to suspending Malawi’s development journey. To them, Mutharika has garnered needed experience in state craft, as such; he must be allowed to continue because nothing will be disturbed.

Fundamentally, there are two things involved here: One, its either we allow the experienced Mutharika/Muluzi family to continue; or, we opt for the inexperienced, greed pricks of Chakwera/Chilima – as former vice president Cassim Chilumpha described them –  to take us a different road.

The question: What would you chose?

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