{"id":53869,"date":"2017-09-20T13:24:19","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T11:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=53869"},"modified":"2017-09-20T13:24:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T11:24:19","slug":"lazarus-chakweras-mzuzu-case-file-misses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2017\/09\/20\/lazarus-chakweras-mzuzu-case-file-misses\/","title":{"rendered":"Lazarus Chakwera\u2019s Mzuzu case file misses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over a year after unknown thugs attacked Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, during a rally at Chibavi in Mzuzu, The Daily Times <\/em>has gathered that the case file for the incident has gone missing in the hands of police.<\/p>\n

Chakwera, who is also Leader of Opposition in Parliament, on March 20 2016 held a joint rally with leader of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) Enock Chihana and People\u2019s Party (PP) vice president for the Northern Region, Kamlepo Kalua, which ended in violence as six people were left injured.<\/p>\n

Back then, opposition parties claimed that the assailants had ill intentions.<\/p>\n

National Police spokesperson James Kadadzera, said he would not comment on the missing file and referred us to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the Northern Region.<\/p>\n

When asked, senior State advocate, Jacob Nambiri, said: \u201cWe have never had that file in our office.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 30 2016, a week after the incident, The Daily Times <\/em>carried an article in which an impeccable police source hinted on the intentions by top government officials and police to misplace the file.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the source has confided in us that the file of the five suspects that were arrested in connection with the violence is neither at Mzuzu Police nor at the headquarters in Lilongwe as police alleged.<\/p>\n

Reacting to the development, political commentators have said the development has eroded the confidence and trust that people had in the law enforcers as campaign fever slowly creeps in ahead of the 2019 tripartite elections.<\/p>\n

MCP\u2019s deputy spokesperson, Ezekiel Ching\u2019oma, has also expressed shock, at the police saying they see a political hand in the development.<\/p>\n

Ching\u2019oma said yesterday that, by now, police would have completed their investigations and commenced prosecution of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs MCP, we look forward to police bringing to court everyone who was involved in the fracas. The perpetrators should be prosecuted and victims should be compensated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ching\u2019oma claimed that police know the culprits but have deliberately chosen not to pursue the matter, thus failing their duty of serving all citizens.<\/p>\n

Social commentator George Phiri of University of Livingstonia has cautioned the law enforcers to avoid biased execution of duties.<\/p>\n

He said, with 2019 election fever creeping in, the law enforcers should be working without bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police are for everyone and they should work as such. Should that happen, people will exercise their freedom of political association without fear. Our democracy should be participatory,\u201d Phiri said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over a year after unknown thugs attacked Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, during a rally at Chibavi in Mzuzu, The Daily Times has gathered that the case file for the incident has gone missing in the hands of police. Chakwera, who is also Leader of Opposition in Parliament, on March 20 2016 held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53869","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\/53869","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=53869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53873,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53869\/revisions\/53873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}