CSOs get Chakwera boost for April 27 demos

Civil society organisations (CSOs) organising the April 27 nationwide protests to petition President Peter Mutharika and his administration on governance shortcomings have received a boost from leader of opposition in Parliament Lazarus Chakwera who has endorsed their cause.

Besides, concerned citizens and the CSOs yesterday presented their notification letter to chief executive officer (CEO) for Lilongwe City Council, district commissioner (DC) for Lilongwe District Council and Lilongwe Police Station.

In an interview yesterday, Chakwera, who is also Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, said as a first person to protest about the disbursement of the K4 billion to legislators in his speech when Parliament was rising, he was in support of the demos.

He said: “I was the first person to protest… because the government was failing to explain. We acted in good faith but our friends acted in bad faith.

“So, if the intent is what I already explained in Parliament then in spirit we are party to that. What needs to be done is for us to sit down and discuss about it.”

Initially, the MCP leader was part of the agreement by members of Parliament (MPs) to allocate the said amount to all the 193 MPs instead of the initial 80, before making a U-turn later.

The influential quasi-religious grouping Public Affairs Committee (PAC) also endorsed the demonstrations despite indicating that they would reignite their own on Electoral Reforms Bills which were postponed in December last year.

But in separate interviews, PAC chairperson the Reverend Felix Chingota and his spokesperson Father Peter Mulomole said yesterday the organisation’s executive board was yet to meet to discuss their postponed demos in relation to the April 27 CSOs demos.

Said Mulomole: “We are supporting the April 27 demos because they are being organised by fellow civil society organisations. However, I cannot relate that to our own because the board has not met and I would not want to speculate their thoughts.”

One of the conveners of the demos, Gift Trapence, who is executive director of Centre for the Development of People (Cedep), said they were not taking a softer line on the issue and nothing will obstruct them from proceeding.

The CSOs want Cabinet ministers Goodal Gondwe (Finance, Economic Planning and Development) and Kondwani Nankhumwa (Local Government and Rural Development), to voluntarily step down or the President should fire them for their roles in the K4 billion financial transaction and an annulment of the entire arrangement. The two ministers have insisted they did nothing wrong.

However, Trapence hinted that even if the ministers leave they would still proceed with the demos because there are other issues such as deterioration of basic services like blackouts, high rate of unemployment and the general decay of the state of governance.

The human rights defender said since the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) was probing the K4 billion issue, the two ministers should step aside for proper investigations the way it happened with former minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development  George Chaponda in the Maizegate issue.

Over the past few months, Malawians have endured prolonged hours of blackouts with authorities keeping on changing dates when the problem would eventually reduce drastically or come to a halt.

Again, while government is busy painting a rosy picture, last weekend’s Nation on Sunday just unearthed that 36 private companies had written the Ministry of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development about their intention to lay off some employees. The development is likely to worsen the already unpleasant numbers of unemployed Malawians.

The demonstrations will be held in Karonga, Mzuzu, Lilongwe, Blantyre and Zomba and Trapence said it was in accordance with Section 40 [2] [d] of the Constitution.

Trapence said they had submitted the letters in good time to prepare together with all concerned stakeholders in order to have peaceful demos in respect of prevention of obstruction on occasion of public assemblies, processions or demonstrations on the public roads or streets.

Among the CSOs that endorsed the demos are Human Rights Defenders Forum (HRDF), Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), Cedep, Youth and Society (YAS), Public Affairs Committee (PAC), Citizens Forum for the Defense of Good Governance and Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR). n