As the country inches towards the 2019 Tripartite Elections, pressure is mounting for United Democratic Front (UDF) President, Atupele Muluzi, to quit the party\u2019s working relationship with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and concentrate on building the party ahead of the elections.<\/p>\n
Muluzi is being accused by the party\u2019s grass root followers of abandoning them to work with the DPP without consultations, a development which they say is weakening the party while giving the DPP administration an unfair advantage of abusing Malawians.<\/p>\n
Going forward, the followers are demanding that Muluzi must come out of the relationship or risk being rejected by the party in the 2019 elections.<\/p>\n
Speaking when the party\u2019s Balaka District executive committee members held a press conference, Deputy District Governor Roy Mbewe explained that UDF\u2019s grass root followers are not happy with the way the party\u2019s leadership is handling its relationship with the DPP.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs UDF supporters, we do not recognise that our party is in a relationship with DPP. And we cannot approve of that because people are suffering today because of the DPP. So, it is not our wish to be part of the system that is making Malawians to feel pain,\u201d Mbewe said.<\/p>\n
Mbewe said the supporters are asking Muluzi to resign so that they can choose another person to lead the party to the general elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cUDF is a big party and we cannot allow it to follow DPP, a party that was formed out of our party. We don\u2019t want to be forced to vote for people we are not interested in because of the relationship which does not benefit us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make our own choices and what we want at the moment is for Atupele to come back to us. He can even resign as a minister so that he can save the party,\u201d Mbewe said.<\/p>\n
The followers have also accused their party of not being open to them about the relationship, saying they have tried in vain to invite the party\u2019s Publicity Secretary, Ken Ndanga, to brief them on the current situation but he never availed himself.<\/p>\n
Making her comments, the party\u2019s District Governess, Grace Wellos, urged the ruling DPP to stop using chiefs to castigate its critics, saying the move is backfiring and bad for democracy because the chiefs are doing that out of fear of being removed from their positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs members of the UDF we are happy that Lucius Banda remains the only MP in the party. We, therefore, do not expect the government to be coming here forcing the chiefs to castigate him, this is unacceptable,\u201d Wellos said.<\/p>\n
In a related development, former Lilongwe City South West Member of Parliament, Iqbal Omar, who was fired as United Democratic Front (UDF) vice president, has also reignited his opposition to the UDF\/DPP relationship.<\/p>\n
Omar accuses Muluzi of advancing self-interests.<\/p>\n
Omar, who says he is still the party\u2019s vice president despite a decision by the party\u2019s National Executive Committee (Nec) to expel him from the party in 2015, has been going to some districts in the Central Region, where he has been meeting the party\u2019s supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are querying us: Where is UDF going? There are concerns. Even myself and as UDF vice president, I know nothing about it. There no memorandum of understanding. All supporters of UDF are very shocked. We don\u2019t want our party to die. UDF is a party for people, not an individual. It is owned by the people,\u201d Omar said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He insisted that that the party\u2019s leadership was supposed to consult all members before the working relationship started.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s give the members a chance to air out their views. Most districts in the Central Region reject it. We want the UDF to be strong. The leader must be strong. UDF members should look at where they are coming from,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Ndanga Thursday said the people are not members of UDF.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose people are not UDF. Any person can wear our colours, but it does not mean they are UDF,\u201d Ndanga said.<\/p>\n
Omar was elected Muluzi\u2019s vice at a convention which took place in October 2012. The decision to expel him was made following recommendations of a disciplinary committee after charges of forming parallel structures.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, UDF supporters in Mangochi ignored Muluzi and Local Government Minister, Kondwani Nankhumwa\u2019s calls at a public rally for the supporters to sit and sing together. They insisted that they did not recognise their union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the country inches towards the 2019 Tripartite Elections, pressure is mounting for United Democratic Front (UDF) President, Atupele Muluzi, to quit the party\u2019s working relationship with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and concentrate on building the party ahead of the elections. Muluzi is being accused by the party\u2019s grass root followers of abandoning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46293","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\/46293","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=46293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46297,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293\/revisions\/46297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}