By Durell Namasani
‘The party is not for sale’: Scrapping of nomination fees wins grassroots backing, though questions linger
MCP Leader President Lazarus Chakwera’s press briefing at the MCP headquarters in Lilongwe on Friday has sparked an outpouring of support on social media, with party loyalists hailing the abolition of nomination fees and the launch of nationwide grassroots elections as a sign the party is returning to its members.
On Facebook and X, posts under MCP-related hashtags praised the announcement. Several users identifying themselves as grassroots members shared Chakwera’s message that “the party is not for sale,” saying it directly addressed earlier controversy over nomination fees reportedly reaching K2 million for some positions. “When MPs asked what a young person would pay K2 million with, the President listened. Today he said zero fees. That is the response we needed,” one user wrote.
Supporters focused particularly on Chakwera’s warning against money politics. His framing of the MCP as belonging to all members, not to any individual, region, or tribe, was repeatedly quoted across pro-MCP pages. Some commenters said the timetable for grassroots elections, covering 549 wards and 229 constituencies within the court-mandated 12-month window, demonstrated a genuine commitment to rebuilding party structures.
The reaction online was not uniformly positive, however. Some users welcomed the fee waiver while pressing the question at the heart of the earlier dispute: where does the party’s asset revenue go? One commenter cited Lilongwe Chilobwe legislator Lawrence Chakakala Chaziya’s earlier challenge “Kamuzu Banda left houses and farms, where did the money go?” and called on the party to publish its finances.
Other supporters expressed mixed feelings over Chakwera’s failure to directly address calls for his resignation at the briefing. Petitioners had earlier given him seven days to convene an emergency convention, arguing his term as party president had expired. While few publicly endorsed the opposition position, some moderate supporters posted that they hoped the “zero-fee elections” would produce genuine competition rather than “a different way of arranging one’s own people.”
