{"id":13692,"date":"2015-12-09T10:16:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T08:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=13692"},"modified":"2015-12-09T10:16:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T08:16:42","slug":"political-expert-cautions-united-democratic-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2015\/12\/09\/political-expert-cautions-united-democratic-front\/","title":{"rendered":"Political expert cautions United Democratic Front"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hussein\"<\/a>A University of Malawi (Unima) political science lecturer, Mustapha Hussein, has challenged the United Democratic Front (UDF) to move beyond what he called being a family party to one that is owned by its members.<\/p>\n

Hussein was commenting on recent revelations that the party has sacked its first vice-president Iqbal Omar, Director of Women Zaituna Yusuf and Central Region Governor Dinocius Magombo \u201cfor gross misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview yesterday, Hussein said the biggest problem with UDF is that it hasn\u2019t fully embraced principles of intraparty democracy where views of other members are taken into consideration.<\/p>\n

\u201cUDF is a strong party which has a strong base. If you look at the [Democratic Progressive Party] and the People\u2019s Party, you will notice that they are offshoots of UDF. Since it is a registered party, it will obviously continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it needs to shed off the founders\u2019 syndrome and give opportunities to members of the party be at the centre of decisions. It has to be owned by the members and not the Muluzi family,\u201d said Hussein.<\/p>\n

Other observers say the biggest challenge rocking UDF\u2014the party that is currently governing DPP\u2019s bedfellow\u2014is that members do not have the freedom to question decisions made by its leadership even if they don\u2019t agree with them.<\/p>\n

Omar, who maintains that he remains the party\u2019s first Vice-President, was reportedly sacked for forming parallel structures where, among others, he was appointing new regional governors and conducting meetings without the knowledge of the party\u2019s Secretary General.<\/p>\n

In an interview yesterday, Omar said he will die UDF as he took a larger role in establishing the part.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am still waiting for a call from the disciplinary committee because they never heard my side of the story. They are saying I was establishing parallel structures and appointing governors; they should provide evidence for what they are alleging,\u201d said Omar.<\/p>\n

He, however, refused to agree with observations that many problems rocking the party are due to the fact that it is being seen as a Muluzi family entity.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, former UDF Secretary General Gerald Mponda, who has been replaced by Machinga Likwenu Member of Parliament David Lali, has also hit at his party, saying it is slowly becoming a Machinga and Mangochi party.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are just succeeding in killing the party. If you look at it carefully, this party is becoming more of a Machinga and Mangochi party, from what used to be a strong national party. I tried my best to love the party. Since they have shown that they don\u2019t want people, I will see what I will be doing next,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A University of Malawi (Unima) political science lecturer, Mustapha Hussein, has challenged the United Democratic Front (UDF) to move beyond what he called being a family party to one that is owned by its members. Hussein was commenting on recent revelations that the party has sacked its first vice-president Iqbal Omar, Director of Women Zaituna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13697,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692\/revisions\/13697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}