Govt silence on mass grave shocks APM

Former president Peter Mutharika yesterday expressed shock at government’s silence on refugees’ mass grave uncovered in Mzimba District recently.

Mutharika, addressing a news conference at his private house in Mangochi, said Malawians and the international community, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) deserved to know what happened to the Ethiopians and Somalians whose remains were found buried in Mtangatanga Forest.

He said this is a serious and sensitive issue Malawi authorities should not have swept under the carpet.

The former president also chided President Lazarus Chakwera-led Tonse Alliance administration for failing Malawians by not uplifting their lives economically.

Mutharika cited fuel and forex shortages, sky-rocketing food prices, messed up Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP), shut down of Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, theft of maize and Chakwera’s external travels as signs of leadership failure, which he said was a betrayal to Malawians.

The former president repeated the call on Chakwera to step down, establish a caretaker government and call for fresh elections, just as he had promised Malawians to step down in two years’ time if he failed to deliver.

“Students are dropping out of school because they cannot afford fees, but they promised during campaign no student would drop out of school,” he said.

Answering questions on reports that the Anti-Corruption Bureau may arrest and prosecute him, his wife Gertrude and son Tadikira over abuse of his taxpayer identification number when he was president, Mutharika said he did not understand it because Malawi Revenue Authority and the bureau already interviewed him on the same.

By press time, Minister of Information and Digitisation Gospel Kazako had not responded to questions we sent him on issues Mutharika raised.

But in an earlier response on the economy, Kazako is on record to have said the Tonse Alliance administration is cleaning the mess Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party created.