Malawi’s former president Joyce Banda will be seeking another mandate to run the country, after her People´s Party’s (PP) chose her to lead it into next year’s national elections.

Banda, who recently returned home after four years of self-imposed exile, was elected as PP’s presidential flagbearer on Thursday.

As political parties readied for next year’s elections, 1,800 PP delegates from around the country converged in the commercial capital of Blantyre to give Banda the mandate to attempt to wrestle power from President Peter Mutharika´s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to whom she lost the 2014 elections.