President Peter Mutharika has said he will stick with Saulos Chilima as his Vice President and dismissed allegations that there is a conflict between them.
Mutharika said this in Talk to the President programme on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) on Thursday.
In the programme, Malawians are asked to send questions to the President on issues affecting the nation and he responds to those questions.
One of the questions that arose in the programme on Thursday is that of the relationship between the President and his Vice President.
The question came on the back of reports that there is bad blood between the two.
There have been even suggestions that Mutharika is grooming Minister of Foreign Affairs George Chaponda to replace Chilima in 2019.
But Mutharika dismissed the allegations of poor relationship between him and Chilima.
He said it was bizarre in the first place for anyone to suggest that Chilima was plotting to overthrow the government.
“The issue has been that he is being sidelined on some foreign trips and that I have been sending Minister of Foreign Affairs instead. But he has explained this matter himself. He has told the nation that in the period he has been Vice President, he has been on foreign trips for eight times, far more than any other previous vice president in the same period.
“So stories of conflict or disagreements between us are a myth. I think it is because there have been some conflict between the president and the vice president before. I think some people want that to continue. They want to create things that do not exist. They want that there should be a fight. But with this presidency they are going to fail. There is no conflict whatsoever between the president and his vice,” he said.
In the 22 years that Malawi has been democracy, each of the three past presidents has had conflict with their vice president.
President Bakili Muluzi fell out with his number 2, Justin Malewezi. Late Bingu wa Mutharika also run into conflict with Cassim Chilumpha and Joyce Banda and Khumbo Kachali also fell out towards the elections in May 2014.
Mutharika said people are fabricating stories of conflict between him and Chilima because they are surprised that the two have gone this long without any fight between them.
“I said it during the campaign that I picked someone from the private sector because I wanted to bring in private sector management style in public administration.
“I also said I was going to assign him the public service reform task so that we can run the civil service like the way they do in private sector. So far, that is what he is doing. So whatever people want, I honestly don’t know,” he said.
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