The apparent infighting within the current opposition party, Democratic Progressive Party – DPP, is seemingly far from over, as its leader in Parliament, Kondwani Namkhumwa, and its spokesperson, Shadreck Namalomba, share with the media different standpoints.
Last month, the party’s president Arthur Peter Mutharika, summoned all party’s presidential hopefuls to a closed door meeting and soon after it, the party’s spokesperson told the media that the meeting resolved that all party’s presidential aspirants should temporarily halt holding national sensitization meetings; among other things.
However, in an interview, Namkhumwa told the media that there was no resolution of that nature which was arrived at during the meeting and that he now plans on embarking on a countrywide political tour to detail to Malawians the resolutions Parliament made during the just ended sitting.
“Those are public rallies. The opposition will be patronising those rallies. And we are starting with Lilongwe and then we will go into some other parts of the country,” explained Namkhumwa.
When asked to comment on the situation, one political analyst in the country, George Allan Phiri, said the DPP’s present situation speaks volumes as to whether or not the party has resolved its recent infighting.
Phiri said: “What the party president said is that he is going to parade all of them at a political rally and I have not heard if he has held that political rally yet and this also can lead to some aspirants to go alone.”
Apparently, the meeting APM called with the DPP presidential dreamers seemed to have follow the advice by another former president Bakili Muluzi to APM during a Lhomwe tribe cultural gathering, Mulhakho wa Alhomwe in October this year, where Muluzi chided Mutharika for not showing mature party leadership amidst party wrangles.
