{"id":67868,"date":"2018-07-02T14:33:43","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T12:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=67868"},"modified":"2018-07-02T14:33:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T12:33:43","slug":"opposition-spoils-peter-mutharikas-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/07\/02\/opposition-spoils-peter-mutharikas-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Opposition spoils Peter Mutharika\u2019s party"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MABVUTO BANDA:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As President Peter Mutharika was busy being elected unopposed as the Democratic Progressive Party\u2019s (DPP) presidential candidate in next year\u2019s elections, Malawi’s main opposition party called for his resignation following reports accusing him of fraudulently benefiting from a K2.8 billion government contact.<\/p>\n

Mutharika said on Sunday the allegations were \u201cfake news\u201d as part of a ploy to smear him ahead of a national election next year.<\/p>\n

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) President Lazarus Chakwera said Mutharika should understand that his time is up, joining civil society groups who are also calling for the president to resign.<\/p>\n

“We in the opposition have previously and tirelessly raised such issues of nauseating corruption by President Peter Mutharika’s administration,” Chakwera told journalists in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n

“He needs to resign and call for early elections,” Chakwera said.<\/p>\n

The Anti-Corruption Bureau, has been investigating a K2.8 billion Malawi police food supply contract awarded to Pioneer Investments – a firm owned by an Asian-born Malawian businessman Zameer Karim.<\/p>\n

The findings from the anti-graft body, widely circulated on social media and published in newspapers, said the Karim deposited K145 million into an account belonging to the ruling party and of which Mutharika is sole signatory.<\/p>\n

The ACB has\u00a0not commented on whether the report reflected its final conclusions, which have yet to be officially published. Karim has denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Mutharika, president since 2014, who has been tipped by the London based Economists Intelligence Unit, to be re-elected but regular allegations of corruption could hobble his campaign.<\/p>\n

At the party elective convention in Blantyre, delegates agreed to have Mutharika as their presidential candidate in May\u2019s\u00a0 elections ignoring voices within the party that were against him running because of his age. Mutharika will be 80 years old next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MABVUTO BANDA: As President Peter Mutharika was busy being elected unopposed as the Democratic Progressive Party\u2019s (DPP) presidential candidate in next year\u2019s elections, Malawi’s main opposition party called for his resignation following reports accusing him of fraudulently benefiting from a K2.8 billion government contact. Mutharika said on Sunday the allegations were \u201cfake news\u201d as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67868","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\/67868","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=67868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67879,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67868\/revisions\/67879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}