Kondwani Nakhumwa has saved DPP from collapse

We, members of the Bottom Up Party m(BUP), led by the invincible and unimpeachable Genuine Professor Dr Joyce Befu, MG 66, and Most Excellent Grand Achiever (MEGA-1), wish to welcome all Malawians and international citizens to 2024. 

Political parties will soon be entering that season where, once again, we average Malawians will matter. We will be the goods to buy for them to remain in or get into power.  When they give, take and eat. It is foolish to refuse to receive from someone desperate to give out. Remember two words—receive, eat. Once the season of political bribes is over, we will have to wait for another five years for us to receive and eat again.

We would like to specially congratulate and wish a Happy New Year to Kondwani Nankhumwa and his team of real democrats and law-abiding citizens, for forcing Peter Arthur Mutharika (PAM) and the Democratic People’s Party (DPP) to democratise  and wake up, politically.

Had Nankhumwa and others who were recently silenced at knuckle-point (coup de point) in Mangochi not been adamant about the need to hold the convention in good time for the DPP to get prepared for the 2025 elections and avoid defying the court direction for the party to hold an elective convention in 90 days, nothing would have happened in the DPP because no one, apart from PAM, would have known when to hold the convention; PAM’s desire to stand would still have been unknown; the many presidential aspirants would still be jockeying for the ultimate party seat, the presidency, and consequent opportunity to represent the party as a presidential candidate.

The DPP members must thank Nankhumwa for saving the party from an implosive collapse and steering it away from an undemocratic trajectory.

Nankhumwa has won several court cases against his party. This time around he has lost two consecutive legal attempts to restrain the DPP president from reshuffling the national governing council willy-nilly when the occupants of current seats were directly elected by and, therefore, directly answerable to the DPP membership.

To us, in the BUP, Nankhumwa is a hero. His position is right. Allowing a party president to undo what the general membership of the party did is tantamount to usurpation of power from the membership. The reshuffle should have, again, been done by the convention.

Perhaps what the DPP president did was within the DPP constitution, and party regulations. We don’t know because we don’t care what happens in that party. We only care about the spirit of the national constitution, international human rights protocols and, of course, our own mighty party, the BUP.

Nankhumwa has acknowledged and accepted but not agreed with the verdicts of the High and Supreme courts (which have been uncharacteristically swift in determining this case). Indeed, the courts are the final interpreters of the law but not every judgement is just, fair, reasonable, and justified.

In the United States of America, where the justice system claims to be the blueprint for the world, a serious miscarriage of justice sent someone to jail for 40-some years before a re-examination of the evidence exonerated the man, Kevin Strickland, whose active age had been ‘killed’.  There are many cases worldwide where innocent people have been jailed or hanged because of a travesty of justice. In Malawi’s jails, there are people languishing because court judges made serious mistakes.

Yes, Nankhumwa has lost the case against the DPP but we should not spend too much time praising and deifying the courts. Not all court judgements deliver justice. Not all judges agree with their colleagues.

In Israel, the Supreme Court struck down a Netanyahu law limiting the powers of the supreme by 9-8, which means interpretation of the law is contingent on who is interpreting the law.

Judges are humans with their own vicissitudes.