Police officers Monday stopped Malawi Congress Party (MCP) supporters from entering Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) premises to welcome their president, Lazarus Chakwera, who was coming from Portugal.<\/p>\n
The supporters were stopped from going beyond the first security checkpoint.<\/p>\n
But about 30 uniformed police officers were seen at the place, with some of them in anti-riot police vehicle.<\/p>\n
The MCP leader, who briefly addressed the supporters, before proceeding home, said he was surprised.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in fact inquiring as to what was happening. I\u2019ve not received any report about our supporters causing confusion at the airport. I even asked the supporters if at all they have been misbehaving at the airport. But they said \u2018no\u2019. We will learn more as to what has happened,\u201d Chakwera said.<\/p>\n
He, however, told the supporters that the treatment should not worry them.<\/p>\n
The MCP supporters have been welcoming Chakwera whenever he is coming from a foreign trip. In most cases, he addresses them at a mini-stadium outside the VVIP section of the airport.<\/p>\n
National Police spokesperson, Nicholas Gondwa, could not be reached on his mobile phone, for the police\u2019s comment on the matter.<\/p>\n
In 2013, President Peter Mutharika, then Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) acting president, was stopped from addressing his supporters who had gathered at the mini-stadium<\/p>\n
The police then said Mutharika was stopped from addressing the people for security reasons. They said it is only the country\u2019s president who is permitted to address people at the airport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police officers Monday stopped Malawi Congress Party (MCP) supporters from entering Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) premises to welcome their president, Lazarus Chakwera, who was coming from Portugal. The supporters were stopped from going beyond the first security checkpoint. But about 30 uniformed police officers were seen at the place, with some of them in anti-riot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848","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=22848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22856,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848\/revisions\/22856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}