Malawian President fears ghosts, flees mansion..
I love the politics…
Reports in the Malawi and international press about President Bingu wa Mutharika’s fear of ghosts have upset the presidency. After denying the allegations, President Mutharika ordered the arrest of the two journalists first reporting he feared the presidential palace was haunted.
Reporter Raphael Tenthani of the BBC and Mabvuto Banda of Malawi’s independent daily ‘The Nation’ earlier last week first filed reports of the scandal: The real reasons for President Mutharika to move out of the presidential palace was because of fears it was haunted. The allegation was thus widely carried by Malawian and international media over the weekend.
Local newspapers in the US and Australia filed stories titled “Malawi’s President flees haunted mansion.” According to a Canadian broadcaster, President Mutharika even “says ghosts forced him out of official residence.”
The Malawian President however is not fond of seeing his name in such a context. Earlier this week, the Roman Catholic told the press that his political enemies had planted these allegations in the press. He had no intentions to move out of the exclusive New State House in Lilongwe, he insisted.
Also Reverend Malani Mtonga - a senior adviser on Christian affairs to the President, whom the journalists quoted as their source - denied the reports after they appeared. Reverend Mtonga had earlier been quoted by the international press as saying that President Mutharika had asked the clergy to pray to “exorcise evil spirits.”
In stead of hunting ghosts, the Malawian government decided to get to the root of the problem: the press. Journalists Tenthani and Banda were thus arrested today by police at their homes in the commercial capital of Blantyre, in southern Malawi. They are currently being detained at police headquarters in the capital, Lilongwe.
Sources within the Malawian press hold that the two journalists surely had been arrested over their ghost writing. It was however still unclear whether the journalists had been charged, according to Joseph Makuwira, a spokesman for ‘The Nation’.
The arrests of Mr Tenthani and Mr Banda have caused protests in Malawi and abroad. Several journalists staged a protest march in Lilongwe today, demanding the release of their two colleagues. Also the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today protested the arrest in a statement.
In Unrelated News….(wink), (wink)…
President Mutharika…mentally unfit for presidency?
BLANTYRE, Malawi (Reuters) - The Malawi party, under whose banner President Bingu wa Mutharika took office last year, lodged an impeachment motion in parliament on Wednesday that could see him ousted. The United Democratic Front, which wa Mutharika has since quit, accuses him among other things of violating the constitution and misusing government funds to buy a Mercedes and pay for his grandchildren’s education.
UDF backbencher Maxwell Milanzi, who filed the motion on behalf of the party, said he had the support of the Malawi Congress Party, the other major parliamentary group in the southern African country. The president has not responded to the charges and no one from his office was immediately available for comment. The action brought to a head a dispute between wa Mutharika and his predecessor Bakili Muluzi, who remains a powerful figure in the UDF and who has been angered by an anti-corruption campaign targeting his inner circle.
“In accordance with Section 86 of the Constitution, the President, Bingu wa Mutharika, will be indicted by this house on grounds of serious violations of the constitution and the laws of the Republic of Malawi,” the motion read.
The motion accuses wa Mutharika of offences including violating the constitution by resigning from the political party which sponsored his candidacy. It also says he fired government officials without following the proper procedure. Wa Mutharika, who quit the UDF to form his Democratic Progressive Party earlier this year, must appear in parliament within seven days to defend himself. His party has no parliament members and wa Mutharika has lost several parliamentary votes, convincing analysts that he would also lose an impeachment vote.
Under Malawi law, the vice president takes over for the rest of the term if the president is impeached. Wa Mutharika’s job would therefore go to Cassim Chilumpha, a senior UDF leader with close links to Muluzi. Wa Mutharika can appeal to the Supreme Court, which can reinstate him. There is no time-frame for the appeals process. He left the UDF after being threatened with expulsion for his graft campaign against senior figures in the party. But he has failed to assemble an alliance among parliamentary opposition groups.
This year he appointed the country’s first woman to head the police service but she did not win parliament’s approval. Months later, he has yet to present a replacement. Malawi is ranked by the World Bank as one of the globe’s poorest countries with more than three-quarters of its population living below the poverty threshold of $1 a day. Analysts said this was wa Mutharika’s toughest test.
“He has to battle and beat Muluzi or he’s out of office. It is a simple do or die situation. It’s an all out war,” said political analyst Nixon Khembo, head of democracy and governance at the University of Malawi’s Centre for Social Research in Blantyre.