{"id":51038,"date":"2017-07-28T08:51:08","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T06:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=51038"},"modified":"2017-07-28T08:51:08","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T06:51:08","slug":"peter-mutharika-should-apologise-for-using-foul-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2017\/07\/28\/peter-mutharika-should-apologise-for-using-foul-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Mutharika should apologise for using foul language"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard it live on state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) Radio. In vernacular, he said, zimenezi ndizitsiru <\/em>(stupid).<\/p>\n

That was not a schoolgirl, schoolboy or a market vendor but the whole Head of State who is saluted with respected titles of the land such as His Excellency the President Professor Peter Mutharika.<\/p>\n

But before I comment on the presidential foul language, let me turn to another \u2018stupid\u2019 or \u2018foolish\u2019 idea by Chief Lundu.<\/p>\n

I have now come to believe that Chief Lundu of Chikwawa is a threat to democracy, a real threat to our young and fragile democracy and needs to be tamed.<\/p>\n

This week, the chief showed that either he does not read the Republican Constitution or he decides to ignore it for his own reasons, probably for the reasons of his belly and the bellies of his family.<\/p>\n

Well, the issue is that at a rally, organised by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gurus in Chikwawa, to be more specific at Ngabu, the chief declared that he would not allow Prophet Bushiri\u2019s Enlighted Christian Gathering (ECG) in Chikwawa and Nsanje districts.<\/p>\n

To borrow President Mutharika\u2019s word, this is stupid.<\/p>\n

Even the constitutional offices of the district commissioners of Nsanje and Chikwawa have no powers whatsoever to stop ECG spread the good news in the district.<\/p>\n

Paramount Chief Lundu should know how to please his political masters but must not put at risk our hard-won democracy.<\/p>\n

Even his political masters, the DPP officials have no powers to stop Prophet Bushiri from operating anywhere in the country.<\/p>\n

Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Kondwani Nankhumwa should sit down with the chief and tell him that he is not a king.<\/p>\n

He is a mere chief who discharges his duties within the supreme Republican Constitution of Malawi.<\/p>\n

I have never met him personally although I see him on MBCTv being paraded to insult opposition and civil society leaders deemed critical of President Mutharika.<\/p>\n

He was there defending former president Bingu wa Mutharika when he decided to change the national flag, when the former president refused to float the kwacha as a way of improving the dwindling economy.<\/p>\n

Chief Lundu was there when the People\u2019s Party-led government paraded misguided chiefs and religious leaders to say President Mutharika should not be voted into power because Malawi is not a monarch.<\/p>\n

We all remember that.<\/p>\n

We shall also not forget how the chief apprehended one of his subjects, locked him up in a cell at his headquarters in Chikwawa, beat him up severely and nearly starved him to death until police officers came to the rescue of the victim.<\/p>\n

The chief, therefore, has no moral ground whatsoever to say that Bushiri is satanic or that his church preaches Satanism.<\/p>\n

As Bushiri\u2019s press officer Ephraim Nyondo said, this remark bounds on defamation and character assassination.<\/p>\n

Now back to the presidential foul language issue. I think President Mutharika should not take us back to the dark days when his brother, the late Bingu, used not so presidential words to criticise his opponents.<\/p>\n

Bingu used the political podium to chastise his opponents and critics, including civil rights groups whom he said he would smoke them out as if they were mice.<\/p>\n

Everybody expected Mutharika the President and professor, to be more civilised in these issues.<\/p>\n

Calling Public Affairs Committee (PAC) delegates to the 5+1 All-Inclusive Conference in Blantyre as misguided is not only uncalled for but scandalous.<\/p>\n

The only crime the delegates committed was to enforce governance issues, after they noted that there were nepotistic tendencies by DPP.<\/p>\n

The President said this was not true; well, here are some of his facts.<\/p>\n

The Northern Region has three Cabinet ministers and a deputy minister and Thyolo, his home district, has no cabinet minister, good and fine.<\/p>\n

However, Mutharika did not tell us out of the 20-member Cabinet, how many are from the South.<\/p>\n

He gave us some figures of how many top positions in government have gone to the North but he did not tell us how many positions have gone to the South too.<\/p>\n

By spending much time speaking on these issues, Mutharika was dividing the country more than uniting it.<\/p>\n

Finally, I was intrigued to hear that the DPP cadets are back in town, threatening journalists who were covering the corruption case of former Agriculture minister George Chaponda.<\/p>\n

I wonder who the DPP cadets think they are.<\/p>\n

No one fears them and no one will fear them.<\/p>\n

What they are doing is to campaign against their party ahead of the 2019 polls.<\/p>\n

The DPP hierarchy should move in swiftly to discipline the cadets, the DPP leadership should move in to put the cadets on chains instead of unleashing them for silly political expediency.<\/p>\n

The tactics used by DPP to silence journalists are archaic and not in tandem with the new World order.<\/p>\n

Malawi has moved on, the DPP propaganda machinery should be advising the party leadership on how best to deal with dissent and criticisms rather than unleashing the jobless, petty thieves called cadets.<\/p>\n

I heard someone saying DPP has won the last two elections single-handedly, therefore, it is likely to win the 2019 elections.<\/p>\n

DPP must be told that Malawians are now tired of political violence, they want their youths to be used in productive investments not in political violence which characterised the Bakili Muluzi and Bingu administrations.<\/p>\n

The political landscape has completely changed, therefore, to think that DPP would win the 2019 polls just because it had won the last two elections is folly.<\/p>\n

To win the 2019 election, President Mutharika should mind his language, the DPP cadets must be tamed and Paramount Chief Lundu and other traditional leaders must be censored so that they are not political.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Mutharika must apologise for his foul language!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard it live on state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) Radio. In vernacular, he said, zimenezi ndizitsiru (stupid). That was not a schoolgirl, schoolboy or a market vendor but the whole Head of State who is saluted with respected titles of the land such as His Excellency the President Professor Peter Mutharika. But before I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51038","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\/51038","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=51038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51040,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51038\/revisions\/51040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}