Guest Spot

‘MCP president is abusing power’

Felix Jumbe, former campaign director but now second deputy director for strategic planning in the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) vents his frustration to BONIFACE PHIRI about the goings-on in the party.

Why do you think you have been demoted from the post of campaign director to second deputy director for strategic planning?

Demoted: Jumbe
Demoted: Jumbe

The problem with politics in this country is that we like to flush out anyone who has potential. This is a demotion and I will now be reporting to people who even failed to get a constituency. It’s a deliberate move to frustrate me, but it won’t work because I always succeed in every endeavour. You can’t put me in somebody’s armpits and think I will be frustrated; I can work from that armpit and still achieve a lot from there. Remember, I successfully did my part as campaign director where I managed to raise the number of MCP MPs from 26 to 50 after putting up a very successful campaign strategy. But what’s worrying me is that the constitution has been raped since the position I held was a delegated one from the convention, hence non-negotiable. Whatever happened renders the convention null and void. People need to understand that my appointment was a delegated authority in the sense that the convention only elected the president, his deputy, treasurer and secretary general and these people were given authority to elect and fill the remaining portfolios. Once this is done, no one can tamper with the positions and it’s only the convention that can change the composition of the national executive committee (NEC). The MCP constitution protects the president from abusing the powers and start putting friends and relatives into the NEC, but if you look closely this is the trend that’s happening now.

You don’t seem satisfied with the type of politics being practiced in MCP.

It’s a general problem across all political parties in the country where intra-party democracy is almost nonexistent. Remember recently fellow members from MCP unsuccessfully championed my removal from the chairmanship of the parliamentary committee on agriculture. It’s sad that all of a sudden I have become a dissident and my colleagues have completely forgotten all my contributions and sacrifices to the party. For your own information, I was the only one who was not being financed with fuel during the campaign period.

How is your relationship with MCP leader, Lazarus Chakwera?

My relationship with the MCP president is quite normal; that of a junior and his senior. Whenever I have issues needing his attention I meet him, but I am not that type of a person who would want to praise somebody. I respect my seniors, but not to the point of praising.

We understand that during one NEC meeting you refused to endorse Chakwera as MCP presidential candidate for 2019. Why?

This indeed came out during one of our meetings where we were doing a post-mortem of our loss in the 2014 elections. One view was that we lost because we started campaigning very late because the convention was delayed and, as a solution, some proposed that we shouldn’t have a convention in 2019; rather we should just endorse the current leader. I refused because I felt that it was undemocratic, especially considering that the country expects us to maintain the democratic practices we displayed during the previous convention. I suggested that an endorsement would remove our competitive advantage. Mine was just a professional advice, but my colleagues thought my plan was to compete against Chakwera again in the next convention. But I believe that the basis for a presidential candidate to stand again and be a torchbearer should be performance. If it’s a matter of timing, I proposed that we can call for an earlier convention so that we work with authority from the people because we are a party that abides by good governance systems. It’s the principle not personality. If we can’t do that we will go into government without strategies and vision, and this is what we are seeing today with the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration because the process to elect the current president was not democratic.

You are often seen in the company of DPP ministers and MPs, most of whom speak highly of you. Would one be wide of the mark to conclude that you have joined DPP as some of your colleagues in MCP are speculating?

I haven’t joined DPP and I will never be DPP. All my parents were MCP and my father was a senior member of the party and he attended the first MCP convention. When you see me with DPP ministers, it’s because I want the government to fix problems in my constituency like roads and hospitals. Most DPP ministers like Goodall Gondwe, Francis Kasaila and Patricia Kaliati speak highly of me because I am beyond party politics and when I am talking to them we discuss issues and policies that can develop this country. The problem is that the country is operating on an old operating system like a computer using Windows 95 in 2015. Party issues should not define us.

Your vehicle was recently spotted at a DPP function in Mzimba, so why should you continue denying that you have joined DPP?

That was just fabrication and, unfortunately, these lies are being peddled from within by a team calling themselves foot soldiers for Chakwera. The vehicle belongs to Mbapapi Enterprises; an agro-dealer selling our Peacock Seeds. Peacock Seeds is my small seed manufacturing company. These problems root from the time of the convention where we had 12 candidates, but long after when a winner was found, some of us are deemed to still be fighting Chakwera. These foot soldiers even went as far as demanding that we shouldn’t be incorporated into the NEC.

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