{"id":64650,"date":"2018-04-30T07:20:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T05:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=64650"},"modified":"2018-04-30T07:21:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T05:21:00","slug":"lazarus-chakwera-analyst-praise-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/04\/30\/lazarus-chakwera-analyst-praise-bishops\/","title":{"rendered":"Lazarus Chakwera, analyst praise bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Malawi Congress Party president, Lazarus Chakwera, has lauded Catholic Bishops on their call for a new era for the country to move forward.<\/p>\n<p>The bishops under the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) Sunday released a pastoral letter that was read out in all Catholic churches across the country asking for change in the way things are being done \u201cand never to pretend that everything is well\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thank the bishops for releasing such a powerful letter. What government needs to do is to reflect on what they are saying and act. The letter cannot be dismissed, the authorities and all Malawians need to consider it,\u201d Chakwera said.<\/p>\n<p>People\u2019s Party Spokesperson, Noah Chimpeni, said the bishops have a point in saying that the country needs a new era as almost every sector is disintegrating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhatever the bishops have said should be taken seriously. The points that they have underlined are a true reflection of what is happening now. You talk of leadership or governance, many Malawians are concerned with what is happening right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Political commentator, Ernest Thindwa, said what Malawi needs is quality leadership.<\/p>\n<p>Thindwa said Malawians need to start questioning leaders whenever things are going wrong in the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDemocracy has not delivered as the citizenry expected. There are two things that I can point out as major causes of the problems we are facing. One is poor quality of leadership and weak parties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are only a few leaders who we can point at that they at least did better during their tenure. And now parties which are the link between the people and the government are too weak to foster development. I agree with what the pastoral letter has observed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>However, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) spokesperson, Francis Kasaila, said the message is for everybody in the country to reflect on the contribution to the development of this country.<\/p>\n<p>He said as a country, there is need to review some of the strategies and see how the citizenry can be moved out of poverty.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe strategies we are talking about here are not a responsibility of one person. All of us need to reflect. What is it that we are doing to move this country forward?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Kasaila said the DPP administration is aware that there are challenges in public service delivery but this should be a shared blame.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have always talked about the challenges that we are facing in all our sectors. Nobody in the country is saying we do not have problems. And one thing that has been highlighted by the bishops is that we are stealing drugs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTherefore, the letter is calling upon all of us to change the way we look at the public service, we need to be responsible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malawi Congress Party president, Lazarus Chakwera, has lauded Catholic Bishops on their call for a new era for the country to move forward. The bishops under the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) Sunday released a pastoral letter that was read out in all Catholic churches across the country asking for change in the way things [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64650","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\/64650","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=64650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64651,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64650\/revisions\/64651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}