UTM fails to hold NEC meeting
UTM Party national executive committee (NEC) failed to meet yesterday to, among other things, endorse its central executive committee’s decision to quit the Tonse Alliance.
Secretary general Patricia Kaliati said in an interview yesterday that the meeting could not take place because their lawyers were busy.
She said the meeting has been shifted to next week at a date to be announced.
UTM publicity secretary Felix Njawala announced at a press briefing last Friday that the party’s central executive committee had decided to withdraw from the Tonse Alliance because its alliance partners did not communicate on the way forward following the death of the party’s leader Saulos Chilima on June 10 2024.
Njawala said the party’s NEC was expected to endorse the decision at its meeting which was scheduled for yesterday.
But Kaliati said in an interview yesterday: “We will have the meeting next week on a date which will be announced once we agree. The problem is that the lawyers who should attend the meeting are not available as they are doing other things.”
But political analyst Wonderful Mkhutche said in an interview yesterday that UTM could have other reasons for cancelling the highly-anticipated meeting.
He said it could have failed due to divisions in the party so they could be buying time to iron out some issues.
“For instance, even if the lawyers were available, how could the meeting take place considering that the Vice-President Michael Usi who is key to that meeting was with the President [Lazarus Chakwera] in Zomba? This is just an excuse but there could be more.”
Following Chilima’s death in a plane crash on June 10 2024, some UTM cadres have proposed that the party’s members serving as Cabinet ministers or in other public positions should resign and concentrate on the party affairs.
Minister of Toursim Vera Kamtukule, a UTM member, publicly rejected the proposal.
President Lazurus Chakwera replaced Chilima with Usi as State Vice-President. But senior UTM officials including Kaliati shunned Usi’s swearing-in. They also stayed away from July 6 prayers which government organised to honour the death of Chilima and eight others in a military plane crash.
The alliance was formed in 2020 to oust from power the then president Peter Mutharika and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) following nationwide protests against the DPP government.
