Vice-President Michael Usi yesterday claimed his fallout with the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) administration has led to the withdrawal of his motorcade lead vehicle and review of his personal security detail.
Usi told a whistle-stop election campaign rally in Chigumula, Blantyre that he is now a victim of his open discussion of entrenched corruption in a government in which he is the second most powerful figure and a member of Cabinet since 2020 when the Tonse Alliance swept into power riding an anti-graft sentimental wave.
“I am being mistreated. My convoy has a lead car which scans the road for security purposes. It has been withdrawn and allocated to a person who is not the country’s Vice-President,” he said.
But the Odya Zake Alibe Mlandu Party presidential candidate said he is not afraid and will continue speaking about challenges facing people in the country.
But speaking in an interview yesterday, Minister of Information and Digitalisation Moses Kunkuyu said he did not have information surrounding the Vice-President’s security changes.
“I am trying to get hold of the Principal Secretary in the Vice-President’s office to get more information and only after that can I be well-placed to respond,” he said.
On Usi’s claims about corruption, Kunkuyu said it was gratifying that people in high offices are now past the stage of merely alleging, but are willing to bring out to the public information about acts of corruption.
He said government has already capacitated relevant authorities and they stand waiting to act once information is out.
Security detail cuts to vice- presidents who have fallen out of favour are hardly new in Malawi.
In July 2018, after Chilima fell out with then governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) while serving as vice-president, the Office of the President and Cabinet issued a directive reducing the number of police officers guarding the VP’s official residences in Lilongwe and Blantyre, transferred police officers working at the residences and withdrew some of the vehicles assigned to the office.
Security personnel and some of the vehicles on the vice-president’s convoy come from the Malawi Police Service.
However, national Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya declined to comment on the issue yesterday.
Meanwhile, security expert Sherrif Kaisi said the country has experienced a trend of friction between the president and vice-president as they go towards general elections.
He said the public should expect much more as the country approaches the September 16 General Election in which both the President and the Vice-President are presidential candidates.
Yesterday, Usi also held whistlestop rallies at Bvumbwe, Waluma, Thunga and Makande in Thyolo.
In June last year, President Lazarus Chakwera appointed Usi as Vice-President in exercise of his office’s powers under Section 84 (2) of the Constitution to “appoint a person to filI the vacancy in the Office of First Vice-President within seven days from the date the vacancy arose”.
Usi was vice-president to Chilima in UTM whose party had paired with MCP and others in Tonse Alliance during the court-sanctioned presidential vote in June 2020.
Chilima died alongside eight others in a military plane crash in Viphya Plantation on June 10 2024.
