The vice president of the main opposition Malawi Congress Party resigned Thursday to form a new political movement.
Gwanda Chakuamba (69) said he was acting under pressure from his supporters, who have been asking him to form his own party to contest May general elections.
John Tembo, party president, said Chakuamba was exercising his democratic right, but declined to comment further. The two leaders are long-standing rivals within the party once headed by Malawi’s former dictator, Hastings Banda.
Violence broke out when Tembo ousted Chakuamba as party leader at an April convention. But Chakuamba said the two had settled their differences.
”There is no bad blood between us,” he said. ”Our differences are now water under the bridge.”
Chakuamba spent 12 years in jail for allegedly plotting to assassinate Banda, who died in 1997.
He said he would register his new Republic Party on Friday, ahead of an official launch on Sunday in the capital, Blantyre.
President Bakili Muluzi, who came to power in the southern African country’s first democratic elections in 1994, is required by Malawi’s constitution to step down at the end of his second term in May. – Sapa-AFP