PAC meets over alliance cracks

Quasi-religious grouping Public Affairs Committee has said its board will meet this week to discuss its probable move on the cracks that have emerged in the Tonse Alliance. “You will notice that the developments are so intertwined; on one hand we are talking of other hand we are talking about the Tonse Alliance agreement. The Tonse Alliance— which has nine…

Quasi-religious grouping Public Affairs Committee (Pac) has said its board will meet this week to discuss its probable move on the cracks that have emerged in the Tonse Alliance.

Its executive director Robert Phiri said the meeting will also accord the board an opportunity to reflect on corruption issues in the country.

He further indicated that they intended to have an audience with President Lazarus Chakwera after July 6 Independence Day celebrations.

“It [the purported disagreement] might derail development projects because parties will be concentrating on repositioning themselves for power in 2025 [elections],” Phiri said.

He said Pac has to assess the political situation before it can come up with a position on its next course of action.

“You will notice that the developments are so intertwined; on one hand we are talking of other hand we are talking about the Tonse Alliance agreement. These may require different interventions,” Phiri said. corruption issues, on the

The Tonse Alliance— which has nine political parties including the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), UTM, Umodzi Party, Alliance for Democracy, People’s Party, People’s Transformation Movement, Malawi Forum for Unity and Development, People’s Progressive Movement, among others— supported MCP candidate Lazarus Chakwera in the June 23 2020 presidential election.

National Unity Minister Timothy Mtambo said it was commendable that Pac has taken the initiative to intervene in the issue, saying it would be tricky for his ministry to intervene at this moment.

“This is the reason why my ministry is setting up a Commission on Peace and Unity. The commission will be an independent body that would be handling this kind of thing. I commend Pac for the early intervention,” he said.

Chakwera eventually upstaged Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has won the May 21 2019 presidential election before the courts annulled results over irregularities.

On Friday last week, Vice-President Saulos Chilima, who is the leader of UTM, indicated that, according to their agreement, he was supposed to lead the alliance in 2025, but MCP has openly refuted the claims.

In his address last week, Chilima said, in their 10- year agreement, he and Chakwera agreed that they would support each other to lead for one term each “but if for any reason this were to change, a process similar to what ensued before the agreement was signed would follow”.

MCP secretary general Eisenhower Mkaka, however, said the party did not know about any power-sharing agreement between Chakwera and Chilima.

Recently, Chakwera announced that he would no longer delegate duties to Chilima after his name was allegedly named in the United Kingdom-based businessman Zuneth Sattar’s report, which Anti-Corruption Bureau Director Martha Chizuma submitted to the President.