President Peter Mutharika Thursday lashed out at Vice- President Saulos Chilima camp, describing its political manoeuvrings as \u201cstupid\u201d and that they are afraid of facing him at the June elective convention they have been pushing for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some people who were not happy and saying they wanted a convention. So I told the secretary general [Grezeldar Jeffrey] to announce that we are holding the convention in June. But they have met in Lilongwe to obtain an injunction against the convention. Is that being clever?\u201d Mutharika said, attracting wild applause from his supporters.<\/p>\n
Mutharika was speaking during the re-launch of Lirangwe- Chingale-Machinga Road at Linjidzi Primary School in Blantyre District.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are afraid. It is funny and stupid and they are shaken. Pa konveshoni tikawafinya, tikawapondaponda, tikawanyenya <\/em>[we will trample on them at the elective convention] and they know it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The President also announced that he would go on a whistle-stop tour of Thyolo, Mulanje, Phalombe and Chiradzulu districts on Saturday, when he will respond to all issues related to woes surrounding leadership of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).<\/p>\n \u201cThis is where you will hear more [you will hear what] you have never heard and the day is Saturday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mutharika\u2019s reaction comes after one of the members of the Chilima Movement, Member of Parliament for Mulanje South Bon Kalindo, described the DPP convention as illegal.<\/p>\n Kalindo argued that the mandate of the DPP National Governing Council (NGC) expired in March this year and no one had the mandate to call for one unless the NGC was given a fresh mandate.<\/p>\n At the re-launch, Jeffrey garnered support for Mutharika, reiterating that she would personally vote for Mutharika for the presidency at the party\u2019s convention.<\/p>\n \u201cDo not be shaken by anything because we already have our candidate at the convention and that is you [Mutharika]. I don\u2019t mind that some people will write this or call me to ask why I am endorsing you. I don\u2019t care because everybody has a person of choice to campaign for and I am campaigning for you professor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Jeffrey denied owning a Facebook account which has, recently, been active in castigating Chilima, saying it was created by people who are jealous of her.<\/p>\n DPP regional governor, Charles Mchacha, said people earn respect because they have power. He challenged the Chilima camp to call for a rally and see for themselves if they have a following.<\/p>\n Chilima was conspicuously absent at the function, a reflection of how deep the split has grown. Chilima also missed the official opening of the trade fair last week.<\/p>\n The two met this week in an attempt to resolve the infighting between the two factions. But sources close to the meeting said that two failed to agree on anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Peter Mutharika Thursday lashed out at Vice- President Saulos Chilima camp, describing its political manoeuvrings as \u201cstupid\u201d and that they are afraid of facing him at the June elective convention they have been pushing for. \u201cThere are some people who were not happy and saying they wanted a convention. So I told the secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66155","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\/66155","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=66155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66158,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66155\/revisions\/66158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}