Continued castigations of opposition party leadership by Malawi’s ruling Peoples Party (PP) will miscarry if the party is not cautious, a political commentator has warned.
Some senior PP members like Uladi Mussa, also Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security and Yusuf Matumula, a Mangochi legislator, have gone flat out during their political rallies admonishing opposition party leaders.
Their targets have been PP and Joyce Banda’s main rivals, Professor Peter Mutharika, the acting President of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and United Democratic Front (UDF) youthful presidential, contender Atupele Muluzi respectively, whom they accuse of being a bachelor and too young to rule Malawi.
University of Malawi’s political scientist Dr. Augustine Magolowondo says such politics will backfire on PP.
Talking to Zodiak Broadcasting Service, the renowned political scientist reminded Mussa and his cohorts that the more they continue attacking opposition leaders thinking they are decampaigning them, the more they freely promote their [opposition] agendas to the electorates.
“It is obvious that whatever people say will have an impact on themselves but also on the people or on the party they are talking about,” Dr. Magolowondo advised.
He said PP leaders’ continued castigation of the opposition figures demonstrate politics of panicking on their side where by they are deemed to have run out of ideas.
“And instead of looking at what others are saying in terms of policy alternative they start looking at personalities,” he observed.
The PP leaders allege Muluzi, the son to Malawi’s first multiparty President Bakili Muluzi, is in ineligible to run for presidency because he will be under 35 years by the time of elections but reports indicate that the young Muluzi will turn 35 this coming August.
The Malawi Constitution entitles any bonafide Malawian above 35 years to contest for presidency.
But last Sunday, in a hard talk interview on Zodiak’s Tiuzeni Zoona, Mussa claimed that government, using its own machinery, had established that Muluzi was lying to the nation that he would turn 35 in August.
Mussa, a well known foul-mouthed politician who has served and got fired or resigned in almost all the country’s political parties since multiparty dispensation, has also been on Professor Mutharika for not getting married since the death of his wife.
“There is something strange with this man. Why doesn’t he get married? Why should Malawians want to be ruled by a bachelor,” Mussa, a polygamist reportedly with four wives, said at a recent rally in Lilongwe.
Meanwhile, the young Muluzi has indicated he is suing Mussa for claiming that he was ineligible to contest for the presidency against President Joyce Banda because of his age.
And Mutharika, while laughing off the issue of his marital status, said he had nothing with personal attacks and would continue with his issue-based politics.
“I don’t go personal. My camp will not despise others. We will not go into personal attacks. Whenever I attack government, I attack the policies.
“People will be competing in 2014 and it is not necessary to be personal. They [PP] can say whatever they want but Malawians will be the ultimate judges and will decide on who they want to be their leader, basing on their plans for this country, not on personal attacks,” Mutharika said recently.
