In 2025, the culture of political handouts dominated public debate, especially in the countdown to the September 16 General Election.
Coincidentally, a year ago, the country was shocked when some political elites dished out billions to buy their way into the then governing Malawi Congress Party (MCP) politburo.
During the party’s elective convention, a seemingly startled MCP leader—Lazarus Chakwera, then head of State—slammed his ministers for flexing their financial muscle to elbow their way to the top.
“It is sad that some have resorted to distributing money, making it seem like the MCP is for sale. I urge you, delegates, to perform your duties without fear. Whether you have been enticed with money or not, elect the right people who have Malawi’s best interests at heart,” said a seemingly startled Chakwera.
However, as some political analysts observed, the eloquent rebuke proved too little, too late to curb the give-and-take politics that reared its ugly face all the way to the general election, where neither handouts nor abuse of State resources could save Chakwera from tumbling.
What began as a long-standing, but loosely regulated campaign practice evolved into one of the year’s most defining political controversies, testing the country’s laws, institutions and democratic values ahead of the polls.
Even t
he creation of the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties, a one-man band run by one Kizito Tenthani, could not stop the cancer reducing Malawi’s democracy to a not-so-competitive survival of the wealthiest.
Throughout the year, Nation Publications Limited kept an eye on the illicit political handouts, exposing the legal uncertainty, delayed reforms and dramatic flip-flops involving the presidency itself.
At the heart of the debacle lay a difficult national question: Where does legitimate political outreach end and voter inducement begin?
This is no easy question for a nation where political giveaways have become so entrenched that some voters expect to be palm-oiled, with some mislabelling the handouts as the only tangible benefits of democracy.
This year opened with cautious optimism.
In January, Tenthani, the Registrar of Political Parties, announced that the long-awaited regulations for the Political Parties Act of 2018, which outlaws handouts, were finally ready.
The law, passed nearly seven years earlier, lacked regulations to clarify what it prohibits and its ban on handouts remained largely symbolic.
Tenthani promised that once the regulations were tabled for debate in Parliament, politicians who continued to dish out cash and gifts risked hefty fines or jail time.
“The issue of handouts is an area where you definitely need regulations so that people understand what exactly handouts are within the confines of the law,” he said.
