Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, has come in the open to announce that the party will still hold primaries in all the constituencies to identify candidates to represent it in the 2019 tripartite elections.
\nChakwera said he would not endorse any candidate arguing the party will let the people make independent choices.
\nHe, however, did not disclose when the party will hold the primaries.
\nIn his speech at a rally, Chakwera said primary elections are one way of promoting democracy.
\n\u201cShadows [aspirants] should understand that we always hold primaries in constituencies. Shaking hands with me does not mean you are automatically an MCP candidate in your constituency. People should choose you at your constituency level. The president does not impose candidates on people but receive candidates from them,\u201d Chakwera said.
\nCommenting on the development, youth activist Peter Mumba said parties should always conduct primaries if the country\u2019s democracy is to mature.
\nHe added that primaries give room to the people, including the youth, to compete at all levels.
\nMCP vice president, Richard Msowoya, advised the candidates to be patient and wait for primary elections to be endorsed for their candidature.
\nMsowoya said the current selling of MP candidates can create room for confusions, which can lead to chaos during the primaries.
\n\u201cYou are not MCP shadow MPs until the primaries. Remember we, in MCP, respect the party\u2019s constitution as our president always encourages us to do. Therefore, you are welcome to join us but not as MCP shadows; you are our members,\u201d Msowoya said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president, Lazarus Chakwera, has come in the open to announce that the party will still hold primaries in all the constituencies to identify candidates to represent it in the 2019 tripartite elections. Chakwera said he would not endorse any candidate arguing the party will let the people make independent choices. He, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58382","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\/58382","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=58382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58384,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58382\/revisions\/58384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}