Police have admitted firing tear gas canister at main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) vice president Sidik Mia but were at pains to explain the reasons for violent actions Mia met curio vendors in the central business district of Blantyre, but before he spoke, police came and fired teargas disrupting the meeting.
\n\u201cWhat you are saying really happed. The teargas was fired but I do not know what happened. I am yet to get more information from someone on the ground,\u201d said Ramsey Mushani spokesperson for southern region police.
\nMia described the act as a shame saying the country just celebrated 25 years of multiparty democracy a week ago.
\n\u201cThis is unfortunate. We are a democratic country and people should be free to assemble. There was no violence and the police did not even warn the people that they should leave. Without any prior warning they just came and started firing teargas. That was very unprofessional,\u201d he said.
\nMCP is tipped to win next May polls next year although a British think tank, Economic Intelligence Unit, last week said incumbent President Peter Mutharika will retain power. MCP ruled Malawi for over 30 years before it lost power during the first multi-party elections 25 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police have admitted firing tear gas canister at main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) vice president Sidik Mia but were at pains to explain the reasons for violent actions Mia met curio vendors in the central business district of Blantyre, but before he spoke, police came and fired teargas disrupting the meeting. \u201cWhat you are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67320","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\/67320","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=67320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67322,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67320\/revisions\/67322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}