Peter Mutharika, the former president of Malawi, will run in the 2025 elections

Peter Mutharika, the former president of Malawi, has declared openly that he will run for president of that nation in 2025.

At his first political rally on Sunday in the commercial city of Blantyre, Mutharika—who is 84 in July—announced his intention to run for president. This is his first major political gathering since being overthrown in August 2020 by Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP).

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government of Mutharika, he added, would revive the country’s economy in two years after he returns, saying that his decision was motivated by “Malawians’ outcry” for him to return and “rescue the country from the mess it is in”.

Only a few weeks had passed since Kondwani Nankhumwa, the party’s vice president for the south, had, following his expulsion from Mutharica’s DPP, established the People’s Development Party, his own political organization.

Divergent opinions have been voiced by local commentators; some have praised Mutharika’s return, while others believe the ruling MCP is not threatened by him.

From 2014 until 2020, Mutharika governed Malawi, the least developed nation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The opposition successfully contested Mutharika’s triumph for a second term in office in 2019, and the nation held new elections in 2020 to install an alliance government headed by MCP member Lazarus Chakwera.

Political parties across the nation are repositioning and aligning themselves in anticipation of a fierce campaign ahead of the polls as the 2025 elections draw near.