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Malawi President Peter Mutharika is seeking a second term. By Amos Gumulira (AFP)
Malawi's President Peter Mutharika on Sunday issued the manifesto of his Progressive Democratic Party and his election campaign ahead of next month's elections, where he will run for a second and final term.
Mutharika, who has been in power since 2014, will face fierce opposition, including from his own MP Saulos Chilima, in the May 21 elections.
"This is the largest campaign since 1994, when Malawi achieved a multi-party democracy," Mutharika told more than 5,000 supporters of the Kamuzu Youth Institute in Lilongwe.
"This year we have chosen to go forward or backward.
His government has been pursued by several high-profile cases of corruption and nepotism.
Last November, Mutharika was forced to surrender a $ 3 million contract from a businessman facing a corruption case, worth $ 200,000. This contract provided for the provision of food to the Malawi Police.
But on Sunday, he told his supporters: "In 2014, we made promises and held them.
"We are a government that has done more in the last five years than any other government in the history of Malawi.
"We are ready to take Malawi further from poverty to prosperity," he told the cheering crowd.
And he reached out to the opposition, calling on him to "come and join us so we can build together because they have no new ideas."
Rival competitors
Mutharika, 78, beat incumbent President Joyce Banda in the 2014 presidential elections. Next month, he will face three challengers, including his vice president Chilima.
Chilima, 48, left Mutharika's party to form the United Transformation Movement, while remaining vice-president. Under Malawi law, the president can not dismiss the vice president.
The other two contenders are Lazarus Chakwera, leader of the main opposition party, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP); and Atupele Muluzi, Minister of Health of the Mutharika Government.
The former 64-year-old Baptist Chakwera preacher presents himself with the support of former President Banda.
Atupele Muluzi, 41, who launched her party's manifesto in Lilongwe on Sunday, inherited the unified Democratic Front from her father, Malawi's third president, Bakili Muluzi.
The party entered into a parliamentary alliance with the president's party after Muluzi ranked fourth in the 2014 elections.
According to the World Bank, about half of Malawi's 18 million inhabitants live below the poverty line and the country depends on foreign aid.
Food shortages, power cuts and inflated external indebtedness detracted from Mutharika's popularity before the vote.
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