PP’s inside conundrum
The People’s Party (PP) seems singularly-minded to self-destruct before the next tripartite elections. And, I must admit, they are doing a great job at it.
It has engaged itself on a mission so ludicrous it can only end in one thing and one thing only: chaos. The party—from any perspective you look at it—seems intent on proving that it is entirely possible to correct one mistake with another. They are doing everyhing wrong while the solution, if they took a gamble, is staring at them in the face.
And on the evidence of Monday’s suspension of its director of administration Peter Kaleso, PP’s woes are far from over.
You see, it all started early last month when Mzomera Ngwira, PP provincial chairman for the north, and other like-minded individuals within the party, thought they had all it sewn up when they kicked out their leader, Joyce Banda, and crowned Khumbo Kachali in her stead in an interim measure.
An unconstitutional and brazen move it was, but one reckons they were ill-prepared to deal with the hullaballoo that has followed.
Kachali was coy about the idea, suggesting he had just returned to the ford and Banda remained leader. He may have been sincere or he might have anticipated the backlash that followed and wanted to play it safe. It may even have been a move to cull the favour of JB’s supporters, who may be equally disaffected by the former leader’s absence, but who wouldn’t countenance a coup.
Or perhaps he senses—like most people do—that JB’s time in politics is over, that he could get the leadership of the party on a silver platter with her blessings and without throwing as much as a fight. Such a sentiment has some traction when one considers that JB has always been on the government side since her election as a parliamentarian in the late 1990s. A life in frontline politics as an opposition figure may not be as appealing to JB. Does she hold on to her position until the next convention? I would be surprised, but stranger things have happened in politics.
Perhaps Kaleso and the provincial governors can sense the blood, too, and are moving in for the kill, so to speak. Now, one wonders why only Kaleso was suspended when the provincials governors are said to have formed a consensus to have Kachali installed as leader until Banda returns, now rumoured to be October?
The suspension does not even begin to address the leadership gap which the party’s membership has been agitating for since JB left Malawi. It only exacerbates the feeling of doom and gloom.
What never gets mentioned in the tedious leadership circus in the PP is that it still has a vice president, Uladi Mussa—appointed after the elected Cassim Chilumpha resigned—who should, naturally, have been calling the shots on an interim basis.
Why Mussa’s name has not been thrown into the hat for visible interim leadership should be cause for some disquiet to him. Maybe like the other five vice presidents—Chilumpha, Kachali, Sidik Mia, Harry Mkandawire and Brown Mpinganjira—who have jumped ship, he, too, could be assessing his options. He is not named Chenji Golo for nothing. n
