Northern Region district governors for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have sacked their deputy regional governor, Afiki Mbewe, three days after he endorsed Vice-President Saulos Chilima for 2019 elections.<\/p>\n
The governors, who disassociated themselves from Mbewe\u2019s claims that some of them are behind the decision that Chilima should be the DPP\u2019s touch-bearer, said they no longer want to work with Mbewe in the region.<\/p>\n
Rumphi West district governor, Kondwani Harawa, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cMbewe implicated us in his association with Chilima\u2019s candidature. We are saying we are for Peter Mutharika. This is not the first time for him to implicate us in things that we do not know.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast time, he said we wanted our regional governor Kenneth Sanga to resign. Should we still be keeping him? No! Let the NGC [National Governing Council] find a position for him but not here, in this region.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governors from all the 22 political districts in the region argue that they have powers to fire Mbewe because they are the ones who elected him.<\/p>\n
Governors who spoke during the press briefing said Mbewe was invited to the briefing but he failed to show up because he knew that he lied to the country.<\/p>\n
But Mbewe, who said he was not invited, claimed the governors have been sent by \u201cthugs\u201d who have surrounded Mutharika and do not wish the country well.<\/p>\n
Mbewe alleged that the governors had been given money to speak against the people\u2019s support for Chilima.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me tell the leaders who coached these governors that they will be betrayed because some of them called me giving me updates on what they have been told to speak, the K50,000 money they have pocketed and the financer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf these governors were not with me, do you think they could have been updating me on what transpired there? In true sense, they are in support of Chilima and they will come out soon,\u201d Mbewe said.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the governors\u2019 demands, Sanga said he is yet to deliver the complaint to the party\u2019s secretariat.<\/p>\n
But DPP spokesperson, Francis Kasaila, said the party would act on the demands after receiving the official complaint.<\/p>\n
University of Livingstonia political analyst, George Phiri, said firing Mbewe is not a solution to problems rocking the blue camp.<\/p>\n
Phiri said the governors could have just pushed for the party\u2019s convention to vote out people that are not wanted, including those who speak against decisions made by the party.<\/p>\n
The press briefing was attended by some regional committee members and Presidential Advisor on Youth Affairs, Nick Masebo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Region district governors for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have sacked their deputy regional governor, Afiki Mbewe, three days after he endorsed Vice-President Saulos Chilima for 2019 elections. The governors, who disassociated themselves from Mbewe\u2019s claims that some of them are behind the decision that Chilima should be the DPP\u2019s touch-bearer, said they no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64031","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\/64031","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=64031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64033,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64031\/revisions\/64033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}