Malawi wraps up campaigning ahead of tight election battle

Two presidents vying for a second term at Malawi's elections next week drew hundreds of supporters to their final rallies Saturday ahead of what is expected to be a tight race to govern one of the world's poorest countries.

Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary elections come with the southern African country in economic crisis, marked by fuel and foreign currency shortages and the after-effects of drought and cyclones.

"There have been complaints about the cost of living, the lack of resources, food scarcity," incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera told a crowd packed into a stadium in the capital Lilongwe, the heartland of his Malawi Congress Party.

"I have heard all of them and I have taken your words to heart. We will fix things," the 70-year-old evangelical pastor said.

Chakwera was elected with nearly 59 per cent of ballots in a 2020 rerun of a vote the previous year that was nullified after the courts upheld the opposition's claims of fraud.

He defeated the previous president, Peter Mutharika, who had been narrowly ahead in the cancelled irst take and is now his main challenger in a field of 17 presidential candidates.

"The change starts on inauguration day," Chakwera said to cheers, blaming others in his administration for some of the problems facing the country of nearly 21 million people.

'TO THE RESCUE'

In the second city of Blantyre, Mutharika, 85, said he wanted re-election because "I want to rescue this country."

"The country is in trouble, it is suffocating," the lawyer said, pledging to economic reforms and job creation.

"On Tuesday, you will decide whether Malawi should go forward or will go backwards," he said, accusing Chakwera of concentrating his flagship infrastructure projects around Lilongwe.

Around 7.2 million voters are registered to cast their ballots on Tuesday, with results expected before the week is over.

An outright victory will require more than 50 per cent of votes, and analysts say a second round is all but inevitable

With familiar faces heading the presidential race, some voters were despondent.

"There have been so many troubles over the past five years," said Mundi Gama, 47, in a long line of vehicles snaking around a Lilongwe petrol station.

"People are hungry in the villages, there are fuel supply problems, electricity problems, prices are high," the businessman said.

The election "will bring no difference really... but people want change", he said.