MCP Insiders Call on Chakwera to Step Down Over Corruption and Party Mismanagement

A rebellion is brewing inside the ruling Malawi Congress Party (MCP), and the message from the insurgent faction is blunt, furious and unmistakable: President Lazarus Chakwera must step down. A pressure group calling itself the MCP Revolution for Change of Leadership has publicly demanded that Chakwera relinquish the party presidency, accusing him of presiding over a culture of corruption, internal betrayal and a leadership style that has alienated the party’s own loyalists. “We stand before you today as members of the MCP Revolution for Change of Leadership, a serious and committed reform movement within the Malawi Congress Party,” the group’s chairperson Samson Chaziya declared during a press briefing.

It is a principled effort to restore accountability, discipline and direction within our beloved party.” The warning represents one of the most direct and scathing internal attacks on Chakwera since MCP assumed power under the Tonse Alliance in 2020. According to Chaziya, the pressure group was formed in 2021, barely a year after MCP took power, when members began to notice what they describe as a steady erosion of the party’s core values and structures. The group says it even sought an audience with Chakwera to raise the alarm.

But those warnings, the group claims, fell on deaf ears. At the centre of the rebellion is anger over what the group describes as the systematic sidelining of long-serving MCP loyalists in favour of outsiders. According to the rebels, key positions in government have increasingly been handed to individuals with little or no historical connection to the party, leaving grassroots members who fought for the party during years in opposition feeling abandoned and betrayed.

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“This created frustration among loyal party members who had worked tirelessly for the party during the years it was in opposition,” Chaziya said. The group’s secretary Potiphar Banda went even further, accusing the current leadership of failing to consult party structures, tolerating corruption and operating without transparency in the management of the Tonse Alliance arrangement. Banda said the group had even submitted a petition to Chakwera recommending that some of his aides implicated in corruption be removed from office.

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