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Legal experts and members of the civil society Sunday accused the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Ishmael Wadi of talking too much without following up with action, saying Malawians want more action and not just lip service.
Malawi Law Society (MLS) secretary Linda Ziyendammanja warned in an interview that the DPP should not rush to the media to make public statements before collecting enough evidence ready for prosecution.
Ziyendammanja warned that the DPP will jeopardise his own investigations on the cases he intends to pursue by rushing to the media before investigating the cases and having sufficient evidence.
“Our advice as Malawi Law Society is that the DPP should first of all have substantial evidence before he goes to the media to avoid alerting the accused persons. Evidence can easily be destroyed. Let him be more serious with his investigations,” she said.
Ziyendammanja said although Wadi has shown zeal and determination to perform as DPP, most of what he has said so far has not been backed by action, noting that very little is happening compared to what he has said.
Malawi Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), a grouping of human rights organisations in the country, said Malawians are tired of lip service but want more action especially the completion of back log cases that were already investigated.
“He is talking too much on paper but doing very little on the ground. What he is doing is just scaring people. A dog that barks too much doesn’t bite,” said the chairman of the grouping Rogers Newa.
“The public wants more action. Malawians will be more happier to see cases passing through the court and not prosecuting them in the papers.”
He said Malawians expected very little talking and more action when the new government came in but he said very little has happened so far compared to the bunch of information the new DPP has given to the media.
Newa warned that what the DPP is doing will disturb his own cases because evidence will be tampered with and destroyed since he is alerting the accused persons in the press before instituting investigations.
“We want maturity and professionalism. May be the DPP should consider hiring a press officer so that he should spend more time working than making public statements. Let him remain quiet and take cases to court,” he said.
“Malawians are wondering what is making him to fail. The public is ready to support his plea for more funding “but they want to see action first and not just lip service.”
We failed to get a comment from Wadi when we phoned him because his mobile phones were cut immediately after explaining why we were calling him. After that he couldn’t be reached on his two numbers.
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