LILONGWE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Late former Malawian Vice President Saulos Chilima's United Transformation Movement (UTM) party Friday announced its exit from the nine-party governing alliance.

Felix Njawala, the UTM's publicity secretary, announced the decision at the party's headquarters in Lilongwe, saying the party wants to concentrate on the September 2025 general elections.

In 2020, the Tonse (Together) Alliance ushered the Malawi Congress Party's Lazarus Chakwera into the East African country's presidency.

Njawala said although Chilima, who founded the UTM and died in a plane crash on June 10, did not give the party's direction regarding the Tonse Alliance, the UTM believes that their leader would have made the same decision given the direction that the alliance had taken.

The UTM's supporters welcomed the exit as a good move that will allow the party to prepare for the 2025 elections.

The UTM will hold the party's convention in October to elect a leadership that will take the party to the 2025 general elections, Njawala said.

In the 2019 presidential election, Chilima polled third, while Chakwera came second after then President Peter Mutharika of Malawi's Democratic Progressive Party.

However, the country's constitutional court faulted the 2019 election on grounds of "irregularities and anomalies so widespread, systematic and grave that the integrity of the results was compromised."

In a rerun presidential election in 2020, Chakwera went into the alliance, which included the UTM as a key partner, to scoop the presidency. Enditem

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