|
|
|
|
| Front Page |
| Koreia-Mpatsa chased from Trade Fair |
|
by
Gedion Munthali, 26 May 2003
-
11:49:43
|
Police on Saturday forced former Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI) president Jimmy Koreia-Mpatsa, now co-chair of the People’s Progressive Movement (PPM), to leave the 35th Trade Fair opening ceremony performed by President Bakili Muluzi.
Muluzi himself took time off in his opening address — where he called for public and private sector collaboration if Malawians are going to be economically empowered — to lambast the previous MCCCI leadership, accusing it of practising politics in garbs of business captains.
“For the past five years the private sector development failed to take shape because the chamber concentrated on politics,” said Muluzi, himself a former vice chamber president when he started an underground movement against the MCP regime. “If you are a politician but masquerading as a businessman, you are just fooling yourself. We will not respect you.”
“If you want politics, you must join politics. The problem in Malawi is that almost everyone have left their professions and joined politics. I don’t know what they think Chakufwa (Chihana, the Second Vice President who was also in attendance) and I will be doing,” said Muluzi, praising new MCCCI president Martin Kansichi of being humble and visionary.
Ironically Koreia-Mpatsa, who headed MCCCI for close to four years before resigning a couple of weeks ago to join politics, was last year also elected president of the Association of Sadc Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASCCI), which groups all 14 chambers of the Sadc region.
The elections took place during ASCCI’s second annual general meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa last May, just a week after the local chamber reelected him for another two-year term, expiring in 2004.
And in a survey conducted by a German organisation last year, MCCCI, was rated the second most effective chamber in the Sadc region in terms of performance, effectiveness and future plans. Mauritius was first.
Muluzi’s accusations came just an hour after about 10 law enforcers were seen taking Koreia-Mpatsa away from behind the VIP platform where he was seated among other dignitaries attending the event. This was when Muluzi was still inspecting pavilions around the Fair grounds.
In an interview, Koreia-Mpatsa said the cops, some of them armed, took him to a police post temporarily set up within the Fair grounds where they told him to leave the event because he was not properly dressed.
“I was told that I was not supposed to put on casual wear at the Head of State’s event,’ said Koreia-Mpatsa. “So I decided to leave because I did not see the reason my dressing was deemed wrong, given that I was not performing any official duties and it was a weekend more so that there is freedom of dressing in Malawi.”
He was wearing a short-sleeved Madiba shirt over a matching cream pair of trousers and brown shoes. There were a lot more dressed likewise. Just next to him was another man wearing a blue jeans suit and big ‘ragamuffin’ shows, among many in informal clothes.
“I found that to be a very flimsy excuse. It was just a way of removing me from the function. I think I have been taken for political harassing. Just last week I was told to stop using the VIP lounge at Chileka Airport. These are nasty things happening to those who choose a different political opinion to that of the ruling party,” complained Koreia-Mpatsa.
On Muluzi’s accusations that MCCCI failed to nurture the growth of the private sector because it was concentrating on politics, Koreia-Mpatsa said the Head of State was just “twisting facts”. He added that when he got interested in politics, he resigned as president of the MCCCI.
“Private sector growth is not created by the chamber. It grows in a conducive environment created by government. The blame for the poor performance of the sector must be placed right on the doorstep of government,” said Mpatsa wondering why the president did not point out the “alleged political anomaly” to the chamber “all these years” |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
