This week has seen a heightened flurry of political activities both in and outside courts. There is a strong sense in which one feels everything government and other political figures are engaged in—except the slow intervention in the fuel queues—point towards the D-day. Indeed, the countdown to September 16 is real. For MCP, it looks like the party has activated the campaign mode to full-throttle. But the fuel crisis alone is undoing everything it is doing to woo voters.
On Monday police separately arrested senior opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members, including the party’s vice-president for the South Joseph Mwanamvekha and lawmaker Sameer Suleman. The Blantyre City South East legislator for the DPP is accused of making defamatory remarks against Malawi Congress Party (MCP) secretary general Richard Chimwendo Banda and other party officials. Suleman, on the other hand, is alleged to have said that the MCP officials were plotting to kill him. This is a serious accusation and so I will make no further comment on it since it is in court. Suffice to say the matter further pits DPP and MCP in a dogfight that has already revealed its ugly face ahead of the elections later this year.
Mwanamvekha, a former minister of finance, was picked over the alleged misappropriation of K447.5 billion of government funds through the Salima Sugar Company and the Greenbuilt Initiative. Police also arrested former secretary to the President and Cabinet Llyod Muhara, former Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) chief executive officer Collings Magalasi and former secretary to Treasury Cliff Chiunda, all in connection with the Salima Sugar Company saga.
Again, whether the charges against the accused are real or just imagined, we just have to wait for the showdown in court. Chiunda, Muhara and Magalasi are not politicians but who cares? In Tumbuka they say Kalulu na chivwati chake. When you want to annihilate an enemy hiding in a house, you don’t care how you vanquish the whole house.
Police already arrested several others and are currently hunting for Dr Henry Njoloma, former acting CEO for the Greenbuilt Initiative. Why is Njoloma on the run?
Alliance for Democracy president Enoch Chihana and his deputy Timothy Mtambo cheered up their DPP friends in police cells. Quite expected from them as future partners with DPP in the coming elections, they condemned the arrests describing them as politically-motivated. Their premature affiliation to DPP is diminishing their visibility on the ground.
The arrests also came hot on the heels of ministerial appointments of some opposition DPP and People’s Party legislators into the Cabinet last week. It is called the incumbency advantage and the MCP administration has not been shy to exploit it to the fullest possible advantage.
Meanwhile, during the swearing-in ceremony for the new Cabinet ministers, President Lazarus Chakwera asked Malawians to give him another five years. He described his first tenure in office as a period for laying down the foundation for economic growth and development. According to him, the first five years were for conducting incisions on economic boils created by the DPP administration.
Not to be outdone, DPP presidential candidate Peter Mutharika went on a grueling whistle-stop tour of Blantyre townships on Wednesday. Returning to Ndirande, a no-go area for him only four years ago—he was chased during campaign in 2020—Mutharika wooed voters to bring him and DPP back to power in the next elections. He must have returned home a very happy person that Ndirande has once again accepted him. Of course, as usual, he fell short of giving a convincing reason Malawians, who removed him and his party from power in 2020 for failing the country, should bring them back this year.
For all its efforts to remain in power come September 16 this year, the never-ending fuel queues which have become a new norm amid suffering, are doing the party a great disservice.
But the long time it is taking to correct the situation is a typical of the MCP administration’s manner of handling crises. But this one is a crisis of gargantuan proportion. Whatever investment the administration is pouring into its bid to remain in power, the fuel problem alone is undoing over 50 percent of the same.
