Mutharika complains over newspaper column

President Peter Mutharika has complained to Editors Forum against Weekend Nation newspaper editor and columnist George Kasakula over his no holds barred critical articles.

In a letter Nyasa Times sourced, President Mutharika through his press secretary Frederick Ndala,  complains of Kasakura’s ‘My Diary’ column of  July 19, 2014 entitled “I won’t Say I Told You So”.

In the said article. Kasakura writes that it is the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) functionaries, whom he calls “thugs”, that were responsible for the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) warehouse  arson in Lilongwe, destroying ballots.

State House press secretary said the DPP and the Presidency “have noted with concern the tone, aggressive language and inaccurate content” of the columnist in the said article.

Ndala:  Presidency concerned
Ndala: Presidency concerned

“As far as we know, there has not been an inquisition that has established that the DPP functionaries were responsible for the MEC fire and we wonder where Mr. Kasakura is getting that idea that it is the DPP which is responsible for the fire,” State House letter to Editors Forum reads.

State House accuses Weekend Nation editor of having “a pathological hatred” for the DPP and “passionately believes that the DPP is a party of thugs and has not changed.”

Asked to comment on State House protest, Kasakura said: “ Ndala should not get overexcited by his new job hence his actions and those of the President be construed as trying to muzzle the media.”

And writing on his latest column of ‘My Diary’ titled “This kind of justice sulks and stinks”, Kasakura went to town criticising Director of Public Prosecution, Bruno Kalemba  for withdrawing “case after case” involving “ individuals that have got something to do with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and it seems the top public prosecutor has only realised he could change his heart after the political grouping won power on May 20.”

President Peter Mutharika and five others were charged with treason following the death of his brother, Bingu, in 2012 stemming from their perceived attempts to stop Joyce Banda from constitutionally assuming office. The case was ongoing until when the President assumed power, noted Kasakura.

He also noted that former clerk of Parliament Matilda Katopola was answering an abuse of office case in court in relation to how Parliament awarded her company a tender to supply stationery but  the DPP “has seen sense in discontinuing it this time.”

“Robert Chasowa was a brilliant engineering student at The Polytechnic until three years ago when he was brutally murdered and his body left on a cold concrete at the college for merely being a hothead politically and speaking against the then excesses of the DPP regime.

“Those behind the heinous crime planted a fake suicide note on his body with a view to dupe the nation into believing that he took his own life when the case was that he was murdered because of his political views and activities. Arrests were made after a whole commi-ssion of inquiry found that this was a pure senseless and callous butchery and the cases were in court,” writes the columnist.

He wondered why Kalemba has now said Chasowa’s file needs more information before he can take it to trial.

“Perhaps he has just fallen short of saying he will also write the Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament, once again, informing it that he has in fact withdrawn the case.”

The columnist says “what is at play here is selective justice and it violates all manner of fairness and a just society.”

He stresses that selective justice “sulks and it stinks.”

 

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