MCP spits fire over ‘politics of terror’

The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has warned vandals of its billboards, banners, posters and flags across the country to “stop forthwith” or risk paying heavily for their transgressions.

A team of MCP members, led by their national campaign director Moses Kunkuyu, said in Blantyre they equally have energetic and competent young men and women to counteract the actions, but do not want to do so to avoid violence.

They observed that the next few weeks were crucial to Malawi Police Service (MPS) and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) to ensure they uphold their obligations to probe the incidents and ensure all perpetrators face justice regardless of their political affiliations.

MCP claims it has lost billboards, banners, posters and flags of its leader Lazarus Chakwera and other parliamentary candidates and has urged relevant authorities to check those elements of politics of terror and intimidation.

While expressing fear that people’s lives and property may be lost ahead of the May 21 elections, Kunkuyu claimed that DPP youths were the architects of the “barbaric and retrogressive acts”.

But, in an interview, DPP spokesperson Nicholas Dausi, who is also Minister of Homeland Security, while expressing ignorance of the incidents, distanced DPP from the allegations, stressing “it was time MCP leadership concentrated on its family matters than pushing every fault to DPP”.

MEC chairperson Jane Ansah has repeatedly urged political party followers to desist from indulging in any act of violence such as using inflammatory language during campaign to avoid inciting violence. n