NGO censures govt on JB’s security

Malawi Watch has condemned government for a statement it issued on Monday that President Joyce Banda and members of her family are receiving death threats.

Malawi Watch executive director Billy Banda in an interview yesterday said Monday was a sad moment for Malawi when Minister of Information and Civic Education Brown Mpinganjira told journalists in Lilongwe that the President was getting death threats.

Banda said sensitive as the matter is, government should not have come  out in the public and tell the nation the President was under death threats.

Banda said: “This is a security matter and it should have been left for security agents to deal with it. Mpinganjira in his own words said he could not say much because doing so would hinder investigations into the matter, why say it in the first place?

“Elsewhere, presidents get a thousand death threats, and they don’t take such matters into the public.”

He said this was a serious security matter that should have been treated as such other than trying to buy public sympathy.

Banda said: “Government has to come out in the open and explain the issue surrounding the death threats. Malawians may start speculating that it was the reason the President failed to go to Parliament to address the National Assembly on the Capital Hill cash-gate.

“If the President cries wolf in the public, what should we expect from officials holding sensitive positions in institutions that fight corruption? Who is safe then? This is embarrassing, to say the least.”

Mpinganjira, addressing the news conference in Lilongwe, said the President and members of her family were getting death threats from foreign agencies and within for her fight against corruption.