PP in talks to end wrangles

Opposition Peoples Party (PP) says it has resolved differences the High Court asked it to settle out of court.

The party’s publicity and administrative secretary Ken Msonda yesterday said the differences have been resolved through contact and dialogue and the party was now rebuilding and still reaching out to some aggrieved members.

The 14-day period to resolve the differences expired on Friday.

The party has been rocked with differences following the appointment of Uladi Mussa as acting president in absence of former president Joyce Banda.

The party’s national campaign director Salim Bagus, alongside others, obtained an injunction stopping the appointments by Banda of Mussa as acting president and Kamlepo Kalua as third vice-president.

Upon discharge of the injunction that restored the appointments, the High Court in Mzuzu ordered that the party’s legal affairs sub-committee must resolve the issues out of court within 14 days.

But in an interview yesterday, Bagus said discussions were ongoing.

He said he could not say whether the issues have been resolved or not, but his team was open to negotiations.

However, Uladi Mussa said in an interview yesterday that the party did not have any problem, arguing the only issue was that he was appointed president.

Mussa said: “If the appointed acting president was somebody else other than me, there would not have been any problem. But because it is me, some people are not happy.”

He said the PP constitution was clear that in the absence of the party president, he was the rightful person to be in charge, being the first vice-president.

Caesar Fatch, a PP member who has expressed interest to vie for the party’s presidency during a convention and has been part of a team that has been trying to use contact and dialogue to bring sanity in the party, disclosed in an interview that he met Mussa over the same disagreements.

Fatch said they discussed a number of issues at their meeting in Blantyre on Friday and he hoped differences would be ironed out.

He said he did not hide to Mussa his ambition to contest for presidency and that he was strategising for that dream.

“I also expressed my concern that the differences were drifting the party back,” Fatch said.

He described the meeting as successful, saying an agreement to forget the past was met.

Mussa declined to say anything regarding the meeting.

Fatch and Msonda also reached out to former vice-president Khumbo Kachali on January 29 and later to Bagus and his team.

Kachali was being accused of disrupting a meeting in Mzuzu where his camp physically fought with that of Mussa.

Banda has been outside the country since she lost the May 2014 presidential election to Peter Mutharika.

She has been giving different reasons for not returning home, including fearing for her safety and persecution.

Government is on record to have said it wants her back to answer charges relating to plunder of public funds at Capital Hill notoriously known as Cashgate.