MAYOR of Mzuzu City Council William Mkandawire yesterday announced that he has joined opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP), three months after dumping former ruling People\u2019s Party (PP). His joining has cleared speculation that he was planning to join ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).<\/p>\n
Mkandawire was welcomed by MCP regional, district and constituency committees at the party\u2019s regional offices in Mzuzu City. Speaking in an interview, Mkandawire said MCP is the only party which has vision to improve the lives of people in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy coming is genuine. I have have been an independent councillor as well as Mayor for the city for three months without any party. I was quiet because I was looking for the party which people have confidence in. I am happy to say that MCP and [its president] Lazarus Chakwera can bring\u00a0 change for a better Malawi,\u201d Mkandawire said.<\/p>\n
He then said he has followed normal procedures of joining the party through Area Committee and later at constituency level before being welcomed at National Executive Committee.<\/p>\n
In his welcome speech, Deputy Regional Chairperson for North-South region Gracious Soko said the party will work with Mkandawire in selling the party in the region.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the development, University of Livingstonia-based political analyst George Phiri, said Mkandawire\u2019s joining of the MCP can be a boost as well as detrimental to the party ahead of the 2019 general elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think his joining is not strange because the majority of politicians prefer to work with parties than being independent. Therefore Mkandawire can make the MCP strong or sometimes destroy because others may fear for their positions in the party,\u201d Phiri said.<\/p>\n
Mkandawire, who dumped PP in March on the ground of the party\u2019s alleged lack of proper leadership, is the third high profile politician to join the MCP in the past two weeks after veteran politician Ken Kandodo and Sidik Mia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MAYOR of Mzuzu City Council William Mkandawire yesterday announced that he has joined opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP), three months after dumping former ruling People\u2019s Party (PP). His joining has cleared speculation that he was planning to join ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Mkandawire was welcomed by MCP regional, district and constituency committees at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50719","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\/50719","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=50719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50725,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50719\/revisions\/50725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}