BY IDRISS ALI NASSAH

The only surprise is that it has lasted this long.Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima were tied together by the common objective to rid of the DPP administration. Chakwera needed Chilima’s one million plus votes and Chilima said the undertaking was that Chakwera would, in turn, support his run for president.

But the two–MCP and UTM–were never monolithic in outlook, political culture or ideology. The link that held them together was to see Mutharika out of power and once that was achieved, the chain began to break. The scope and scale was not immediately obvious but the first hint of trouble in paradise was when, some four months in, President Chakwera in his public addresses stopped referencing to “Dr Chilima and I” and MBC started to speak of an “MCP-led government”.

This tectonic shift, accentuated by President Chakwera’s speech at the swearing in of his ministers today, should not be underestimated. The president is marking territory, is taking full responsibility and will assume credit for all that will go right. The vice president is, yet again, being cut off and may, in future, use this to claim plausible deniability for any of what may go wrong.

Importantly, today may have sounded the death knell to the illusion of a Tonse Alliance when what obtained was, in actual fact, only a vehicle needed by MCP to get into power and by UTM to hope to get into power one future day.

Discerning political pathologists will tell you that Tonse died on arrival the day the election was won. What we await for now are the formal divorce proceedings. Whether we will witness an amicable separation or be entertained by an acrimonious divorce is down to the erstwhile lovebirds. But, as often happens, one of the two walks away bitter.

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