Two of Malawi\u2019s major development partners, the United States of America and the United Kingdom have urged all political parties in the country to respect their opponents ahead of forthcoming October 17 by-elections and 2019 tripartite elections.<\/p>\n
The statement has been released a week after Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, wrote the country\u2019s development partners, requesting their immediate intervention over threats Lawrence Sitolo, their candidate in Nsanje by-elections, is receiving from senior Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials.<\/p>\n
In a brief joint statement released on Tuesday, US Ambassador, Virginia Palmer, and UK High Commissioner, Holly Tett, said Malawi should maintain its reputation in democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cMalawi\u2019s democratic record is a model for Africa and beyond. As Malawi\u2019s development partners, we support Malawi\u2019s preparations for another round of democratic elections (by-elections and general elections in 2019), a core component of which are free and fair campaigns. We urge all parties to respect the rights of their opponents to stand for election and campaign freely,\u201d reads the statement.<\/p>\n
On October 17, Malawi Electoral Commission (Mec) will, apart from Nsanje Lalanje Constituency, hold by-elections in Lilongwe City South East and Lilongwe Msozi North constituencies.<\/p>\n
Other by-elections will be held in Mayani North Ward in Dedza, Mtsiliza Ward in Lilongwe and Ndirande Makata Ward in Blantyre.<\/p>\n
In last week\u2019s communication, Chakwera asked the diplomatic community to help in investigating threats to Sitolo and ask President Peter Mutharika to stop what the DPP officials were doing.<\/p>\n
In the letter, Chakwera said the DPP members asked Sitolo to either receive K100 million and defect from MCP to become an independent candidate or resign and accept a diplomatic posting to unnamed duty station and K50 million on top.<\/p>\n
However, Minister of Information and Communications, Nicholas Dausi, and Democratic Progressive Party spokesperson, Francis Kasaila, later dismissed MCP\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n
They argued that if there are any complaints on the issue, they should be channelled to relevant institutions in the country, some of which are Mec, police and the Anti-Corruption Bureau .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two of Malawi\u2019s major development partners, the United States of America and the United Kingdom have urged all political parties in the country to respect their opponents ahead of forthcoming October 17 by-elections and 2019 tripartite elections. The statement has been released a week after Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, wrote the country\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53118","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\/53118","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=53118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53124,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53118\/revisions\/53124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}