Malawian women ganged up to Stop foul-mouthed Ben Phiri’s Parliamentary seat bid
LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-As dust refuse to settle down over the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Director of Elections (DE), Ben Phiri’s slurs against former First Lady, Patricia Shanil Dzimbiri, women from various regions of the country are teaming up to barricade Phiri’s parliamentary bid for Thyolo Central Constituency in the forth coming May 21 Polls.
The women who are coming together regardless of their political party affiliation, want to petition the elections refree, Malawi Electral Commission (MEC) and other relevant elections related bodies in the country to disqualify the DPP’s DE and completely bar him from contesting in the parliamentary race, because he has portrayed himself unfit to hold and uplift the leadership responsibility of keeping the dignity of women in the country.
“We have the responsibility to show the elections captains that the parliamentary aspiring candidate in the name of Dr. Ben Phiri has shown lack of moral uprightness, through disrespecting all women, by his own foul mouthed remarks against the former First Lady at a public political rally,” said Dr. Catherine Gunda, a leading figure in the grouping against Phiri’s parliamentary bid.
“We are also contemplating of dragging this man to court for the shame he has caused on the former First Lady who deserves respect for her role as she was the mother of the nation” she added.
The women who have already held their first meeting in Blantyre feel that, if left without taken to task, the youthful politician has potential of influencing the younger generation to think that politicians can go and stand on the podium and hurl any amount of insults on a woman and manage to go scot free, all in the name of politics.
“Mind you, whether she is a politician or not, the former first lady is a mother, a sister, an aunt who has family and friends, holding leadership roles in church and in various quarters of the society hence the injury that this Ben Phiri has caused is colossal,” said Mwiza Lupanga, a lawyer and woman activist.
Through a video clip gone viral on social media, Phiri was over the last weekend while holding a political rally in Balaka made some negative and demeaning bedroom remarks concerning the former First Lady, Shanil Dzimbiri who is currently a member of UTM.
Phiri said, former President Bakili Muluzi had divorced Shanil because she is not good in bed.
Although Phiri is on record to have thereafter apologised, still more, the women feel the apology has not been made in good faith but rather, after some pressure that he has received from various concerned quarters.
The DPP DE is also on record to have once refered President Arthur Peter Mutharika as “maliseche” literary meaning “nakedness”.
