Date Of Article: 4/1/2003
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Muluzi parades UDF candidates
By: Aubrey Mchulu
President Bakili Muluzi on Monday paraded Economic Planning and Development Minister Bingu wa Mutharika and Nkhotakota South MP Cassim Chilumpha as UDF presidential candidate and running mate, respectively. Muluzi, who first announced the development in a special address on MBC Radio 1 on Sunday evening, described the process leading to the nomination of Mutharika and Chilumpha during a meeting on Saturday as “very democratic and transparent”. He said at a public meeting at Thava in Thyolo: “There was total democracy. I gave everyone a chance to declare their interest on whether or not they wanted to lead the UDF in the general elections and the three [Mutharika, Agriculture Minister Aleke Banda and Environmental Affairs Minister Harry Thomson] were the only ones who came forward.” He said the three were requested to leave the meeting room to enable the delegates, comprising UDF national executive committee members, cabinet ministers and their deputies all totalling 54, to thoroughly assess them. “It was then that all the 54 delegates, including myself, voted for Dr. Mutharika,” said Muluzi. Describing himself as a “political technician”, Muluzi said he deliberately reserved his comment on the third term bid championed by UDF loyalists and vehemently opposed by opposition parties and civil society groups because the Republican Constitution is clear that a President can hold office for only two five-year terms. Mutharika, dismissed as executive secretary of the 22-member Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) by heads of state and government during their meeting in Lusaka, Zambia in April, 1997 for what the then Commerce and Industry Minister the late Chakakala Chaziya described as “flagrant abuse” of Comesa regulations, appealed for support from UDF functionaries and said he will continue from where Muluzi stops. Mutharika’s dismissal from Comesa followed a report of an investigations panel comprising Zambia (chair), Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) which found him as “lacking the vision to take Comesa into the next century”. On the other hand, Chilumpha, who was fired from Muluzi’s cabinet in November, 2000 alongside NDA president Brown Mpinganjira and organising secretary Peter Chupa in connection with the unresolved K187 million Ministry of Education scandal, also asked for support saying: “Muluzi should not go out of office with the UDF as was the case with the MCP and [the late] Kamuzu Banda.” UDF southern region governor Davis Kapito, one of the staunch advocates of Muluzi’s third-term bid, said Muluzi never wanted a third term of office and claimed that his speech has put his critics in disarray.
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