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DPP says APM will go unopposed

 

 

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice-president for the South George Chaponda says President Peter Mutharika will go unopposed at the party’s convention and represent the party in the 2019 Tripartite Elections.

Leading a team of some members of DPP National Governing Council (NGC) at the party’s regional offices in Blantyre, Chaponda said their “democratic system” allows Mutharika to automatically go for a second term; hence, no need to subject him to voting.

He said: “In fact, when we go to the convention, it is not that he [Mutharika] will be subjected to voting. Our democratic system allows that if he has gone for the first term which is five years and is medically fit, he can automatically go for the second term.

Chaponda (L), Mphepo (C) and Dausi gesture at the briefing

“Actually, he has been endorsed by the party members as such he will go automatically as our candidate in 2019… After all, it is his constitutional right to stand again.”

Debate on Mutharika’s candidacy has gathered momentum since former first lady Callista Mutharika threw her weight behind Vice-President Saulos Chilima to lead the governing party during the 2019 Tripartite Elections. She stated that Mutharika, her in-law, was aging.

Since then, several senior DPP members have also backed the Chilima proposal with some cautioning Mutharika to “tread carefully and seriously rethink his position” to represent the party.

But DPP vice-president for the North Goodall Gondwe, who is also Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, indirectly ridiculed Chilima, 45, saying running the President’s office and government affairs was serious business that requires old people with experience and not “babies” who are novices in State matters.

Chilima is now currently in-charge in the absence of Mutharika, 79, who is currently in the United Kingdom.

During the briefing journalists after meeting DPP regional and district leaders from the Southern Region yesterday, Chaponda was accompanied by Mutharika’s special adviser on political affairs and DPP administrative secretary Francis Mphepo, Minister of Information and Communications Technology Nicholas Dausi and DPP regional governor for the South Charles Mchacha, among others.

The DPP constitution stipulates that the convention shall elect all “office holders to various positions in the party” with no exception to automatic endorsement of the party president after serving the first term.

Pressed whether his statement was meant to bar other challengers from contesting on the position of party president, Chaponda said should somebody emerge to challenge Mutharika at the convention “we will see there”.

However, University of Livingstonia political scientist George Phiri questioned Chaponda’s statement and wondered whether Mutharika will go for it.

He  also wondered whether Chaponda was representing Mutharika correctly in his statement or he was merely “assuming that Mutharika will be interested in his talk”.

Last year, results of an Afrobarometer Survey revealed that if elections were to be held then Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president and leader of the opposition in Parliament Lazarus Chakwera would win the elections.

During the May 20 2014 Tripartite Elections, the Mutharika-Chilima pair got 36 percent of the presidential vote to oust then incumbent Joyce Banda. Mutharika picked Chilima as his running mate from the private sector where he worked as Airtel Malawi managing director.

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