The electoral clock is ticking in Malawi. Voters head to the polls on September 16 to elect new municipal councillors, new MPs and a new President – if they choose not to renew the mandate of the incumbent, Lazarus Chakwera.

Even if they vote Chakwera out, they may not quite get a new leader in the strict sense of the word, as two of the contenders in the 23-strong field are former Presidents – Peter Mutharika (85) and his predecessor, Joyce Banda (74), the only woman to have served as head of State in that country.

Mutharika is not an elderly politician merely making up the numbers – he is a strong contender and, according to some bookmakers, the frontrunner. A survey conducted in May by the Canadian chapter of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance predicted his Democratic Progressive Party will garner 49% of the votes, with Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party trailing at 31%. A more recent survey by the University of Malawi-based Institute of Public Opinion and Research, published last month, also showed Mutharika leading, with 43% support, compared with Chakwera’s 26%.

In line with Malawi’s first-past-the-post electoral system, the candidate with the most votes automatically becomes President, even if fewer than 50% of voters cast their ballots for him or her.

Unlike Banda, who didn’t complete a full term, having been elevated to the Presidency when her boss died in office while she was Vice President, Mutharika served a full first term and was months into his second when Malawi’s highest court ordered fresh elections, ruling that he was the beneficiary of cheating at the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC).

What emerged during court proceedings as losing candidates – including Chakwera – contested Mutharika’s re-election was beyond belief. MEC officials had used correction fluid (the good old Tipp-Ex) to alter the figures on some of the tallying forms sent in by polling stations, while in some cases polling officials even submitted the wrong copy of the results sheets to the main tallying centre. There were also mathematical errors in a small number of cases. No effort at all was made to follow more “sophisticated” rigging scripts – such as the late delivery of ballot papers to polling stations in opposition strongholds or a conveniently shambolic voters roll.

Mutharika went on to lose the Constitutional Court-ordered rerun in 2020. This time, with ballots unblemished and tally sheets left blessedly untouched, Chakwera emerged the clear and legitimate winner.

Many Malawians credit Mutharika with improving their lot during his first term – from 2014 to 2019 – pointing to GDP growth above 5%, a reduction in the inflation rate from 27% to 8% and fuel price stability, among others. But his record is not squeaky clean. For instance, he was linked to a scandal in which three people, including his bodyguard, were arrested for helping him avoid paying $7-million in import duties on 1.2-million bags of cement. A leaked report from the Anti-Corruption Bureau also fingered him for allegedly receiving a kickback from a $3.9-million contract to supply rations to the police.

Unfazed by his less-than-pristine past, Mutharika presented himself at the MEC headquarters in Lilongwe on July 25 to submit his nomination papers. Guess who else was also in the building at the time. Jane Ansah, the former MEC boss who presided over the infamous Tipp-Ex election. She wasn’t there as a keen observer of Malawian democratic processes, but to submit her own nomination papers – as Mutharika’s running mate.

Mutharika may not have been charged – let alone convicted – over the cement import saga or the other scandals to which he was linked, and Ansah wasn’t dragged to court for her role in Mutharika’s fraudulent re-election back in 2019, but they both have thick clouds hanging over their heads. In decent places, that alone would have discouraged – nay, disqualified – them from running.

Kenyan public intellectual and staunch pan-Africanist PLO Lumumba was right when he wrote a few years ago: “In Japan, a corrupt person kills himself. In China, they will kill him. In Europe, they jail him. In Africa, he will present himself for election.”

Ah, me.