CDEDI to go ahead with tomorrow’s demonstration; With or without its alleged abducted leader Namiwa

* All Malawians of goodwill should patronize the nationwide demonstrations

* In order to express their dissatisfaction with the level of insecurity in the country and to say no to political impunity

* Also demands that President Lazarus Chakwera should honour his promise to scrape off presidential immunity or step down

By Duncan Mlanjira

Despite the alleged abduction of its executive director, Sylvester Namiwa and court bail conditions that restrict them from holding demonstrations, Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiative (CDEDI) say they tomorrow’s planned demonstrations will still go ahead.

CDEDI is thus “encouraging all Malawians of goodwill to patronize the nationwide demonstrations in order to express their dissatisfaction with the level of insecurity in the country and to say no to political impunity”.

CDEDI also says the demos are to continue “demanding President Lazarus Chakwera to honour his promise to scrape off presidential immunity or step down”, and expressed serious concerns “with the barbaric behavior of the Tonse Alliance administration, which is using every trick in the book in their shameless attempt to foil the nationwide demonstrations”.

“We are refusing to be intimidated by the MCP and all corrupt leaders who are plundering the country’s minimal resources,” said CDEDI in a statement condemning Namiwa’s alleged kidnapping, whom they said was abducted along the Mtunthama road just immediately after holding a press conference to confirm that the demonstrations would indeed take place.

CDEDI also disclosed that the alleged abduction “has not come as a surprise since Namiwa has on several occasions this week been pestered by the authorities from Area 30 Police Headquarters in Lilongwe and the Lilongwe District Council, to attend some meetings whose agenda items were not clearly stated”.

“Furthermore, Mr. Namiwa’s kidnapping has reminded all the well-meaning Malawians about how ruthlessness and barbaric the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) is, and has brought back the old memories of darkness, kidnapping, killing and detention without trial.”

However, in a comment on his Facebook page, one Benson Jackson Ojesi trending as Caweo Cameras, indicated that while Namiwa’s abduction is very disturbing, records have shown that Namiwa and 11 others, “have a bail condition which states that they should never hold any demonstrations in Malawi until the matter is concluded”.

He indicated that the bail was granted on August 13, 2021 by Mkukula Magistrate Court, whose conditions are that CDEDI, Namiwa and his friends who were arrested on August 11, 2021, “are barred from holding any demonstrations because of organising illegal demonstrations during the time leaders of the  SADC States were meeting at BICC in Lilongwe”.

“This means that if Mr Namiwa, CDEDI and the eleven others, get involved in organising demonstrations, they will be in contempt of court.

“We suspect that the abduction is staged in an attempt make Malawians believe that he will not participate in the demonstrations because he was abducted.

“However, whether the demonstrations will go ahead with Mr Namiwa or without, CDEDI and the eleven others will be in contempt of court. In this era, in the year 2022, when everyone is free to express themselves and hold demonstrations, no one would abduct organisers of demonstrations in Malawi,” he said.

The abduction also follows a report of the investigations that CDEDI conducted on alleged fraudulent financial activities at the Accountant General’s office from June to July, which exposes some high ranking people.

In the report, CDEDI demanded from government that all controlling officers — who approved dubious accumulated and unjustified allowances that led to the recent spate of arrests — should be arrested by the Fiscal Police.

And that meanwhile, no further arrests should be made in Ministry of Finance until the Minister releases allowances data for every public officer beginning from senior most, including cabinet ministers to the junior officers.

The civil society organization (CSO) also demands that Secretary to the Treasury and the Accountant General should “publicly defend their competence in safeguarding public funds, or they should honourably resign before being forced to do so on grounds of incompetence and criminal negligence”.

CDEDI said it conducted its investigations after the spate of arrests of accountants at the Accountant General office, who are accused of defrauding government huge sums of money, starting from early June 2022, saying the arrests “brought a lot of questions than answers”.

CDEDI indicated that this was “just a snapshot of information that is still trickling through” and that they will “continue compiling the data, since the investigations are still on-going”.

The concluded that the arrested accountants “cannot draw money from Account No. 1 on their own” and that “in an unlikely event that this indeed happened, then the Accountant General, the Secretary to the Treasury and controlling officers would be the biggest failures and not fit to be in those offices, and to put it bluntly, they deserved to be arrested first!

“It is a very well-known fact that there is a culture of allowances everywhere in the public sector. Top government officials benefit by obtaining obscene cuts from the very limited national cake.

“The situation at hand is subjecting junior civil servants to undeserved torture just because they powerless.

“Taking into consideration all these findings, we suspect these arrests are being done in order to divert people’s attention from the real issues such as the alleged high profile Zuneth Sattar corruption scandal, as well as the collapsing economy under the Tonse Alliance government.”