{"id":76486,"date":"2019-04-05T11:10:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T09:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=76486"},"modified":"2019-04-05T11:10:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T09:10:59","slug":"peter-mutharika-cassim-chilumpha-shun-debate-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/04\/05\/peter-mutharika-cassim-chilumpha-shun-debate-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Mutharika, Cassim Chilumpha shun debate again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Emmanuel Chirwa: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>President Peter Mutharika, who is Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) torchbearer, and his Tikonze People\u2019s Movement counterpart, Cassim Chilumpha, have been ruled out of this evening\u2019s third and final presidential debate scheduled for Bingu International Convention Centre in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n<p>The debate\u2019s taskforce Chairperson, Teresa Ndanga, Thursday said the absence of Mutharika and Chilumpha means that six candidates will take part in the debate organised ahead of May 21 Tripartite Elections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe [Chilumpha] sent us an apology that he is outside the country. It is the same reason that, although he didn\u2019t tell us, he didn\u2019t come for the second debate. As for President Peter Mutharika, they still haven\u2019t come back to us but the door remains open,\u201d Ndanga said.<\/p>\n<p>DPP indicated that they would shun the presidential debates and those for running mates because they had reservations with the organisation of the event.<\/p>\n<p>Ndanga has since hinted that the last debate would revolve around the youth and human rights issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is so because the youth have registered in large numbers this year and for some of them, it would be their first time to cast a vote. Thus, they need a very informed decision on the person to vote for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are also some emerging issues which we did not tackle previously. This time, they will be taken on board. The country needs to be fully informed on the status of what the candidates have in store for us. Malawians also need to be addressed on long-term solutions to issues hampering the country\u2019s progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Malawi\u2019s population has the youth in majority. Recent Housing and Population Census indicated that out of the population of 17, 563, 149, 8, 669, 215 are aged 18 and above, translating to 49 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi Electoral Commission\u2019s preliminary results of the registration exercise of the elections show that 3.7 million youths registered out of 6.8 million electorates, representing 54 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The presidential debates series started on Friday last week with Malawi Congress Party\u2019s Lazarus Chakwera, UTM\u2019s Saulos Chilima and UDF\u2019s Atupele Muludzi participating.<\/p>\n<p>The second phase held on Tuesday involved independent candidate, Reverend Kaliya, Umodzi Party\u2019s John Chisi and Mbakuwaku Movement for Development\u2019s Peter Kuwani.<\/p>\n<p>Chakwera, Muluzi, Chilima, Kuwani, Kaliya and Chisi are expected to participate in today\u2019s debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Emmanuel Chirwa: President Peter Mutharika, who is Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) torchbearer, and his Tikonze People\u2019s Movement counterpart, Cassim Chilumpha, have been ruled out of this evening\u2019s third and final presidential debate scheduled for Bingu International Convention Centre in Lilongwe. The debate\u2019s taskforce Chairperson, Teresa Ndanga, Thursday said the absence of Mutharika and Chilumpha [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76486","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\/76486","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=76486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76491,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76486\/revisions\/76491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}