Do we like them?

Do we like Peter Mutharika?

Our score: 5 out of 10. Nothing harmful of his own found and a few real policy wins, set against a long trail of integrity questions and complaints about his government.

Mutharika was born in 1940 in Thyolo, studied law at Yale and spent decades as a professor abroad. He only turned to politics in 2004, when his older brother Bingu became president, and went on to serve as justice, education and foreign minister. He is 85 now, which makes this a comeback story with a very long runway.

The road to the top was rough. After his brother died in 2012, he was charged with treason over an alleged plot to conceal the death, and those charges were dropped after he won in 2014. In 2018 the anti-corruption agency accused him of taking a kickback on a police food contract, and he was later cleared, according to the BBC.

Then came 2019. He was declared the winner, but Malawi's Constitutional Court unanimously annulled the result, finding results sheets had been altered with correction fluid and others faked or duplicated. The judges said the electoral commission, not Mutharika personally, had acted negligently, and the court ordered a fresh vote. The rerun in 2020 went to Lazarus Chakwera.

On the harm test, the record is thin but not ugly. His press secretary said in 2016 that he wanted gay rights protected, after an MP posted a call to kill gay people, though he also said Malawians would decide whether homosexuality should be legalised. We found no campaigning against trans people, migrants or the climate from him, and nothing of his own on those topics. Half-hearted on the issue, perhaps, but not hostile.

The good-person test is murkier. Since returning to power he has appointed Henry Mathanga as Reserve Bank deputy governor, despite Mathanga's earlier dismissal for misconduct and pending criminal charges, and legal experts told Nyasa Times the appointment breaches the bank's law. Opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera has also accused the police of a political campaign of arrests against his party's officials. No government response appeared in that report.

There is real good to count. His government announced it would abolish almost all school fees in public primary and secondary schools, a campaign promise, with boarding fees the exception. An education expert said it gives hope but questioned how it will be funded. At his swearing-in he promised to fix the country and declared that the honeymoon of looting government was over.