The undemocratic and unprogressive DPP
All it took was for a few individuals to say what many have been too afraid to say and for Vice-President Saulos Chilima to remain silent for the usually unruffled Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to start falling over themselves endorsing President Peter Mutharika as their candidate for 2019 elections.
Since former first lady Callista Mutharika started the conversation a fortnight ago, various camps of the DPP have been competing to hold press conferences in which they essentially show what is really happening in the party politburo: fear.
If anything, the flurry of press conference jostling to remain relevant and buy favour in the eyes of APM has just crystallised what Malawians had suspected about the DPP all along. DPP is an undemocratic party that is intolerant of diverse views and opinions.
What the DPP Northern Region governor Kenneth Sanga did to threaten to bar delegates to the DPP convention o if they dared express their views on who they would support for the position of torchbearer in 2019 presidential elections really uncalled for.
For a party that calls itself democratic and progressive, it should be the first to practice interparty democracy and views like those of Sanga should have been condemned. But this is DPP, shockingly the majority of those threatened by certain individuals upsetting their plans of ever ruling this country.
As if Sanga’s ridiculous assertions were not enough, the so-called youths of the DPP joined the fray to demand an apology from the party’s director of youth Louis Ngalande, who last week called on APM to reconsider representing the party as its presidential candidate.
Typical of political youth groupings who act before thinking, the DPP youths claimed Ngalande should resign while the presidential adviser on national unity Vuwa Kaunda whose presence at the press conference was questionable in itself, went on to insult those DPP supporters who voted for comedian-cum-politician Bon Kalindo and musician-cum-politician Allan Ngumuya.
The hullabaloo of press conferences that has followed Callista’s supposedly innocent remarks, from the DPP women, the party’s vice presidents and the sections of regional committees from the South and North all point to one thing: panic and uncertainty.
The press conferences are a sign of a panicking and a tortured people. The SKC scenario has clearly shown that silence in politics, if used well, tortures opponents and is a great weapon. As the DPP panics, the SKC camp has breathing space for the second episode.
With the growing silence from SKC, the DPP is not sure who the enemy is and with each press conference that they hold crying on top of their voice that they are behind a near geriatric ruling them, the more disorganised they become.
For the first time the DPP has a taste of its own medicine and now know the pain that comes from being stretched on the rack, something they gleefully did to Joyce Banda when she was vice-president. For the first time, a Vice-President is torturing them not the other way round.
In all this, what should not be ignored is that those in support of APM have not come out to state precisely what it is that makes SKC not eligible to contest as a DPP presidential candidate, Goodall Gondwe’s ill-conceived comment that running the government is not for babies notwithstanding.
By now, the DPP that we all know would have called SKC all sorts of unpalatable names, the social media slander would have been full throttle and a good guess for why this is not happening would be that they are afraid. Those screaming their endorsement of APM the loudest seem uncertain because at one point in the political history of the DPP, there was Cassim Chilumpha and Joyce Banda.
The revolution in the DPP has begun and the party must fear that perhaps SKC does not need the convention or them to be president of this country.
