{"id":63121,"date":"2018-03-29T12:38:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T10:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=63121"},"modified":"2018-03-29T12:41:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T10:41:27","slug":"peoples-party-probes-members-of-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/03\/29\/peoples-party-probes-members-of-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"People\u2019s Party probes Members of Parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/chilenga.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-28115\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/chilenga-300x211.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/chilenga-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/chilenga.jpg 519w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>People\u2019s Party (PP) intends to discipline five of its Members of Parliament (MPs) suspected of associating with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or Malawi Congress Party (MCP), deputy spokesperson, Ackson Kalaile Banda, said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>He said the party just completed investigating the five MPs on several grounds, some of which being that some were among the 86 MPs that were enlisted to benefit from the initial K4 billion payout.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can confirm that we are done with the process of investigating [the MPs] and, MPs will be summoned to a disciplinary hearing,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n<p>The five MPs are Mzimba West\u2019s Harry Mkandawire, who has since joined MCP, Mchinji North\u2019s Racheal Mazombwe Zulu, Mangochi Monkey Bay\u2019s Ralph Jooma, Malani Mtonga and Werani Chilenga of Karonga and Chitipa South constituencies, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>The investigations were led by Ralph Mhone and Yusuf Matumula as leaders of the Legal and Disciplinary departments, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe party also investigated reports that some MPs pocketed up to K2 million each from DPP and that they were initially put on the list of beneficiaries of the K4 billion controversial payout,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n<p>He said they investigated the conduct of some MPs and their involvement with other political parties, which he described as a betrayal of the people\u2019s trust who elected them into positions on PP\u2019s ticket.<\/p>\n<p>Since Joyce Banda\u2014 who is former State president and founder of PP\u2014 went into self-imposed exile after the May 2014 tripartite elections, the party has disintegrated.<\/p>\n<p>Interim leader Uladi Mussa has since defected to DPP while Jooma, resigned his position as the party\u2019s chief whip in Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>When contacted, Mkandawire said PP constructively fired him.<\/p>\n<p>Jooma, on the other hand, accused PP of sharing information with the media instead of the concerned parties, arguing that this smacks of lack of seriousness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a party which is not serious and is killing itself. So, I am done commenting on their issues because, since they told the nation about other actions [they have taken] against me, I have never received any official communication in that regard,\u201d Jooma said.<\/p>\n<p>Chilenga told our sister paper, <em>Malawi News, <\/em>that PP has lost direction in the absence of its founder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People\u2019s Party (PP) intends to discipline five of its Members of Parliament (MPs) suspected of associating with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or Malawi Congress Party (MCP), deputy spokesperson, Ackson Kalaile Banda, said Wednesday. He said the party just completed investigating the five MPs on several grounds, some of which being that some were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63121","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\/63121","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=63121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63127,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63121\/revisions\/63127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}