Aford NEC to agree presidential candidacy, primaries on – Chihana

The Alliance for Democracy (Aford) national executive committee (NEC) will meet next week to discuss whether the party’s leader Enock Chihana contest as  its presidential candidate in May 21 Tripartite Election.

In an interview with Nyasa Times, Chihana said he has summoned the NEC meeting to deliberate on presidential candidacy.

“I am the party president by it is the NEC that endorse me to run for presidential race or pick another candidate. So this will be decided at the meeting,” Chihana said.

He also said MEC meeting will conduct a post-mortem of the party following primary elections for candidates.

“I want to dispel reports that Aford is not conducting primaries to identify candidates in constituencies and wards. We are conducting the primaries except where there are only candidates without challengers,” he clarified.

“NEC will also have a post-mortem on how we are contesting the coming elections,” he added.

Chihana is among the presidential aspirants having collected nomination papers to contest in the May 21 2019 Tripartite Elections bringing the number of hopefuls for the top office to 20.

He denied that Aford has entered an alliance with People’s Party (PP) of former president Joyce Banda.

“It is NEC that can make a decision for Aford alliance or whatever way we want to contest the elections. There is nothing on the table as of now,” he added.

Banda visited Chihana’s residence in Rumphi where they had talks, but the Aford leader said there was no discussion on alliance.

Chihana, served as Cabinet minister in Banda’s administration when she governed Malawi between 2012 and 2014.

He is son of Malawi’s pro-democracy hero late Chakufwa Tom Chihana, the only politician to have served as the country’s second vice president- a post created by former president Bakili Muluzi.