Chatinkha resigns from MCP: ‘Come out of Babylon’

Embattled Malawi Congress Party (MCP) member Chatinkha Chidzanja Nkhoma has resigned from the party after she had been at logger heads with MCP president Lazarus Chakwera whom she helped to ascend to the party’s hot seat.

Announcing the resignation at her home in Lilongwe, Chatinkha cited among other things, the removal of over “1000 members” in various positions and political districts have been illegally removed from the party.

She said her decision has been arrived at with “prayer and soul searching.”

Chatinkha, a long-time serving member of the party, said: “My political activities have been mainly to serve the people of Malawi and not necessarily a career path or job opportunity.  That is why you will discover that I have never run for any political offices in my entire life. I have enjoyed doing politics up to the point where it was practiced within the perimeters of sanity and dignity.”

Announcing her resignation, Chatinkha was franked by her partner, Chauncy Mopho Jere a staunch Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporter.

“Unfortunately,” she added, “we are seeing a new brand of politics in MCP which does not auger well with my spiritual life.”

“Let me remind everyone that until my resignation today, I was a bonafide member of the party because the attempt by Chakwera to illegally fire me and Hon. Denis Nanthumba was dismissed by the High Court in Blantyre by Justice Potani.”

She said like any other political party in Malawi, MCP has faced its fair share of storms, and prevailed.

“In a vicious and ruthless exercises of political cleansing, most of the casualties have been the gallant soldiers, the old resilient guards who fought these tough political battles, these old battered soldiers who fiercely and bravely defended the party and kept it strong when it was not fashionable to belong to it…. and when it even dangerous to be identified as a member of MCP, these people are now rendered destitute and abandoned,” she said.

Chatinkha, who held no party position, said MCP is not a credible party to offer an alternative government.

“The time has come to reflect on the real, not perceived, State of the party, the destructive path it is taking will not only affect the party, but our national democracy, the democracy which was hard fought for by our national heroes,” said Chatinkha.

She claimed that there is a new evil conspiracy going on in MCP and woe unto anybody who dares to stand in their way.

“This conspiracy has nothing to do with building or uniting the party, it has nothing to do with rebranding or strengthening the party, but everything to do with greed and power. This conspiracy is aimed at getting to State House by any means necessary, to amass as much wealth at all costs, to wage an all-out war on anyone they deem to stand in their way,” she said.

Chatinkha said MCP is now a party where its main agenda is the promotion of division, hatred, violence, greed, hypocrisy, tribalism, nepotism, regionalism, bigotry and deceit.

She said dictatorship and tyranny are the order of the day; the party is rolling back the democratic gains that were made in the past 20 years under late Gwanda Chakuamba and John Tembo.

Chatinkha took time to lambast MCP president Chakwera, accusing him of being “a master manipulator masquerading as a Messiah.”

She said: “I have endured and preserved enough in the devil’s den and what I have seen is very scary. I have run the race and my crown is in heaven. I had a duty to speak out on these evils and I did and lost friends and family members who turned against me for it in the process. But the truth sets free.

“I was born and grew up in MCP and I once said a tenant cannot remove a landlord, but now I see that it is safer for the landlord to leave the vineyard to save its own life from marauding bandits and hoodlums. I have been there when MCP went through a thousand changes and survived because it played by the rules of the game.”

She quoted the Holy Bible in the book of Revelation 18;14 which says ”Come out of Babylon because it is marked for destruction, do not be partakers of her sin which has reached Heaven.”

This is  second resignation in MCP in a week following the earlier one by member of Parliament (MP) for Salima Central, Felix Jumbe.