Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Peter Mutharika today made a rare confession that the party he is leading has a dirty past which might make Malawians not have trust in it and, thus, ignore it in the vote.

Speaking in an interview with the BBC, Mutharika accepted that the economy went haywire towards the end of the reign of his brother Bingu wa Mutharika from whom he inherited the DPP.

When pressed as to why the economy went haywire, Mutharika claimed that it had overheated. However, when he was further pressed he accepted that as a party they had made mistakes of which bad governance was a part of it.

However, Mutharika had was still adamant by using ‘perhaps’ in his responses meaning that he was not fully accepting that the party had made mistakes.

“We had perhaps passed bad laws, perhaps had a poor record of human rights, perhaps had issues of bad governance,” Mutharika responded to the BBC.

The DPP is accused of having a bad record on human rights by its detractors. The party’s leader has, however, indicated that they learnt lessons from the happenings and will not repeat them.