The United Democratic Front (UDF) has said the party\u2019s alliance with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will not affect the party\u2019s convention scheduled for the first quarter of this year.
\nUDF spokesperson, Ken Ndanga, said in an interview yesterday that the alliance is only in Parliament and that the party\u2019s constitution provides for the holding of a convention.
\nUDF and DPP union stretches back to the tripartite elections of 2014, when President Peter Mutharika gave UDF leader Atupele Muluzi a ministerial post.
\nBut Ndanga said their alliance has nothing to do with the parties\u2019 affairs outside Parliament; hence, plans to hold a convention which will elect the party\u2019s torch-bearers in 2019 tripartite elections are still intact.
\n\u201cIt is a constitutional mandate for us to hold a convention and there is nothing to stop us from holding such an important meeting. We are under obligation to hold it. The alliance that is there with DPP is only in Parliament,\u201d Ndanga said.
\nHowever, Ndanga said the party\u2019s National Executive Committee is yet to choose members of a convention committee to manage the convention.
\n\u201cThe committee that will be set up will be responsible for, among other things, setting up dates for the convention, place as well as organising nomination papers. So, in principle, we will hold the convention any day during the first quarter of this year,\u201d he said.
\nApart from the UDF, the ruling DPP is in a working relationship with some People\u2019s Party\u2019s (PP) Members of Parliament (MPs).
\nRecently, PP spokesperson, Noah Chimpeni, disputed reports of a working relationship with the DPP.
\nChimpeni said MPs who sided with DPP in Parliament during the recent debate on Electoral Reforms [Amendment] Bills did so as individuals. not a representation of the party\u2019s stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Democratic Front (UDF) has said the party\u2019s alliance with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will not affect the party\u2019s convention scheduled for the first quarter of this year. UDF spokesperson, Ken Ndanga, said in an interview yesterday that the alliance is only in Parliament and that the party\u2019s constitution provides for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58501","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\/58501","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=58501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58505,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58501\/revisions\/58505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}