People\u2019s Party (PP) executive is said to have been split into two camps, with one preferring to work with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) while the other wants to be working with the Malawi Congress Party (MCP).
\nRalph Jooma, who resigned as PP\u2019s Chief Whip in Parliament amid rumours that he intends to join the DPP, said in an interview that the party is divided.
\n\u201cIf you feel like you can no longer unify your members where the members have been advised between two preferences in terms of alliances, what do you do? PP MPs are divided.
\n\u201cThere is a crop that
\n prefers to work with DPP and another that prefers to work with MCP. My job became more difficult. I failed to unify them [PP Members of Parliament],\u201d Jooma said when asked why he resigned.
\nHe expressed disappointment over the lack of unity by MPs during the voting on Electoral Reforms Bills last week.
\nDPP used its numerical advantage and rallied support from the opposition to reject the Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Bill, and the Constitutional Amendment Bill\u2014the two bills seeking to replace the system of electing a president from the current first-past-the-post system to 50 percent+1 system.
\nThe MPs also rejected the Assumption of Office of President (Transitional Arrangements) Bill and the Electoral Commission (Amendment) Bill.
\nThe voting pattern by PP lawmakers on the Electoral Reforms [Amendment] Bills exposed disunity in the party as some MPs voted for while others voted against the bills.
\nJooma resigned on Friday immediately after a heated party caucus chaired by PP leader in Parliament Raphael Mhone
\nPP spokesperson, Noah Chimpeni, said the party\u2019s MPs could not agree on how they would vote despite earlier deciding to make a uniform vote.
\n\u201cThe party had a stand and the stand of a party is taken from the leader of PP in the house. It is regrettable that the members could not be on one side,\u201d Chimpeni said.
\nThere had been rumours that DPP paid off some MPs in PP to shoot down the reforms bills. The speculations got credence when some PP MPs conceded that they had a meeting with President Peter Mutharika.
\nCommenting on accusations that PP lawmakers were bought by DPP, Mhone said PP MPs cannot be bought and that they voted out of their own conscience.
\n\u201cBut that does not represent the position of the party. The position we took [as People\u2019s Party] is [that] we are in support of all Electoral Reforms [Amendment] Bills and that is why today, if you recall, in the first Constitutional Amendment Bill, we said we supported everything.
\n\u201cEven those things which the Cabinet has done contrary to what the law commissioners recommended\u2014 that is, having 50 percent+1 for councillor, MP and the president. Even the recall provisions; let\u2019s have them but you saw what happened. The government side shot them down,\u201d Mhone said.
\nHe also said the party had a caucus and the caucus came up with a clear position that the PP would support the bills as proposed by the Special Law Commission.
\n\u201cThat is why I am saying that what those other MPs have done is not the party\u2019s position because it has not come out of what the caucus agreed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People\u2019s Party (PP) executive is said to have been split into two camps, with one preferring to work with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) while the other wants to be working with the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). Ralph Jooma, who resigned as PP\u2019s Chief Whip in Parliament amid rumours that he intends to join the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57755","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\/57755","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=57755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57759,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57755\/revisions\/57759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}