Police on Thursday raided houses of Malawi Congress Party president Lazarus Chakwera\u2019s two bodyguards to search for unlicensed guns.<\/p>\n
MCP Deputy Secretary General, Eisenhower Mkaka, confirmed the development in an interview. He said about 20 police officers raided the house of one bodyguard in Lilongwe at around 5:45 in the morning and 15 others raided the house of another bodyguard at 3:30 in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Mkaka said on Friday that police officers, who did not have search warrants, were searching for unlicensed guns but they did not find them.<\/p>\n
He, however, said that he could not disclose the names of the two bodyguards on security grounds.<\/p>\n
According to Mkaka, the two were taken to area 30 Police Station where they gave statements.<\/p>\n
Mkaka suspected that the move was politically motivated.<\/p>\n
“We are taking this as political persecution and efforts aimed at intimidating the Leader of the Opposition so that he stops criticising the DPP government. But it will not work because Malawians are suffering, their struggles are real and someone has to talk about them [struggles]. Dr Chakwera will not relent on speaking on behalf of Malawians.<\/p>\n
“As a party we will take this matter to the police because we want to know what prompted them to search the houses of Chakwera’s bodyguards,” Mkaka said.<\/p>\n
However, national police spokesperson, James Kadadzera, while confirming the development, said police only searched the house of one bodyguard.<\/p>\n
Kadadzera added that the police had a warrant of arrest and followed procedures when they conducted the search.<\/p>\n
Kadadzera also disputed claims that police searched two houses occupied by Chakwera’s bodyguards, saying they raided one bodyguard’s home.<\/p>\n
“Police only searched the house of Bikaeli Kapuchi, who is close to the Leader of Opposition and they [police] had a warrant of arrest. It is also not true that the police arrested him. The police just searched his house while he was there. I cannot divulge more details now because police are still investigating the matter,” Kadadzera said.<\/p>\n
Chakwera has been vocal since the scandal pertaining maize importation from Zambia came to light, sharply rebuking President Peter Mutharika for his lack of leadership on the matter.<\/p>\n
During a news conference two weeks ago, Chakwera called for decisive action from Mutharika, without which he promised to ask Malawians to defy him.<\/p>\n
This has made the government to hit back at Chakwera by, among other things, releasing statements attacking his personality.<\/p>\n
A Commission of Inquiry initiated by Mutharika into the procurement of maize recommended that former Agriculture Minister George Chaponda be investigated as his dealings with a private Malawians company called Transglobe were suspicious.<\/p>\n
A joint parliamentary committee chaired by legislator Joseph Chidanti Malunga also recommended ACB’s further investigation into Chaponda’s connection with Transglobe in the purchase of maize from Zambia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police on Thursday raided houses of Malawi Congress Party president Lazarus Chakwera\u2019s two bodyguards to search for unlicensed guns. MCP Deputy Secretary General, Eisenhower Mkaka, confirmed the development in an interview. He said about 20 police officers raided the house of one bodyguard in Lilongwe at around 5:45 in the morning and 15 others raided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42281","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\/42281","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=42281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42284,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42281\/revisions\/42284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}