The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is approaching 2030 with an uncomfortable question it has long avoided: Can the party survive, let alone win, without Arthur Peter Mutharika (APM)?
History offers a brutal but honest lesson.
In 2012, when President Bingu wa Mutharika died, the DPP collapsed almost overnight. Power slipped to the People’s Party (PP), not because the DPP lacked structures, but because it lacked direction and a unifying figure. Two years later, it was APM who resurrected the party and returned it to power in 2014.
Again in 2020, the DPP was pushed into opposition after the courts nullified the disputed 2019 election and ordered a fresh poll. Many wrote the party’s obituary. Yet once more, it was APM who carried the DPP back to government in 2025 through an election widely regarded as credible and fair.
These are not coincidences. They are evidence.
For over a decade, the DPP has been held together—politically, electorally, and psychologically—by one man. APM has been the party’s shock absorber, its vote magnet, and its ultimate fallback plan whenever disaster struck. That reality may be uncomfortable, but denying it is dangerous.
Now, as the party looks to 2030, the stakes are higher than ever. APM will not be on the ballot forever. Age, political fatigue, and the natural limits of leadership make that unavoidable. Yet within the DPP, succession remains a taboo subject—whispered about in corridors, avoided at conventions, and feared by those who benefit from the status quo.
This silence is the party’s greatest weakness.
A political organization that cannot openly debate leadership renewal is not preparing for the future; it is gambling with it. The DPP risks becoming a party that only knows how to win with APM—and only knows how to lose without him.
The question, therefore, is not whether APM has been valuable. He has been indispensable. The real question is whether the DPP is willing to do the hard work of institutional renewal: grooming credible successors, managing internal rivalries, modernizing its message, and proving that it is bigger than one surname.
Who steps into APM’s shoes? Who commands national appeal, party unity, and electoral credibility? Who can withstand the pressure of state power, opposition attacks, and public scrutiny?
So far, the answers are disturbingly unclear.
If the DPP drifts into 2030 unprepared, divided, and still dependent on APM’s shadow, it will not be undone by its opponents—it will be undone by its own refusal to confront reality.
History has already warned the party twice. A third lesson may be far more painful.
The time for polite avoidance is over. The DPP must prepare—seriously, openly, and courageously—for a future without APM. Anything less is political negligence.
