One of the social commentators in the country has warned that the Public Affairs Committee\u2019s (Pac) decision to cancel the planned nationwide demonstrations may result in the waning of trust that people have in the quasi-religious body.
\nPac officials met in Lilongwe on Monday, where the agreement to cancel the demonstrations was made.
\nReacting to the postponement, Mzuzu-based Emily Mkamanga accused Pac of making a wrong decision.
\nMkamanga said the protests would have been a warning to the government on several concerns that Malawians have.
\n\u201cThis will disappoint a lot of people and most might say Pac is not serious about it. People were geared up. Just imagine, even the Catholics had to postpone their meetings tomorrow [today] just because they wanted to participate in this [demonstration],\u201d Mkamanga.
\nShe said the government cannot be trusted as it has just been pressurised and has even changed some of the bills which Parliament has to sort out.
\n\u201cSo, here, too we might think there is a commitment but they can decide that Parliament should rise in two, three days before these bills are passed,\u201d she said.
\nCentre for the Development of People (Cedep) Executive Director, Gift Trapence, said Pac should be cautious on the cancellation.
\nTrapence said Pac should be aware that there were expectations among Malawians and they were ready to demonstrate not only on Electoral Reforms [Amendment] Bills but other governance and service delivery issues.
\nHe mentioned energy, water, unemployment and corruption as some of the socio-economic challenges that Malawians were geared to demonstrate against.
\n\u201cThe cancellation should not defeat the purpose. If that can happen, Pac will be irrelevant,\u201d Trapence said.
\nBut Chancellor College political commentator, Ernest Thindwa, said the purpose was to force government table the bills and now that the bills are in Parliament, Pac is right to call off the demonstrations.
\n\u201cI want to believe the threat of demonstrations has compelled the government to table the bills. I don\u2019t think the pressure of boycotting Parliament by the opposition alone would have compelled the government to table the bills,\u201d Thindwa said.
\nPac, however, said it has made the decisions to cancel the marches and monitor the conduct of Parliament as the Executive has done its part though not fully.
\nIn a message that was specifically targeting all faith-based institutions, mother bodies and all that were ready to participate in the marches, Pac emphasised on attempts to clear the mist on the cancellation.
\nIn a statement that Pac chairperson, Reverend Felix Chingota, read out to journalists yesterday, the committee attributes the cancellation to the circulation of five out of six bills in Parliament.
\n\u201cAlthough our wish was to see all the six reforms bills presented as a package, we are equally gratified by the current development. This is already a plus, and achievement on the part of Pac,\u201d Chingota said.
\nHe said the key request to the Executive arm of government was to see the bills tabled in Parliament and Pac would like to give Members of Parliament a chance to process and debate the bills.
\n\u201cGenerally, it will be recalled that the peaceful marches were targeted at the Executive to present the bills to Parliament. Now that they have done so, we did not find any wisdom in demonstrating against Parliament since the House has just received the bills,\u201d he said.
\nThe demonstrations, which were to be held under the theme \u2018Reclaiming Our Destiny\u2019 received support from several quarters including religious bodies and human rights organisation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the social commentators in the country has warned that the Public Affairs Committee\u2019s (Pac) decision to cancel the planned nationwide demonstrations may result in the waning of trust that people have in the quasi-religious body. Pac officials met in Lilongwe on Monday, where the agreement to cancel the demonstrations was made. Reacting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57560","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\/57560","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=57560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57591,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57560\/revisions\/57591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}