Chakwera condemns Malawi as ‘mafia state’: Urges citizens to rise up

Malawi’s opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera has condemned the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials for being a crime enterprise which they are bound together to create a virtual “mafia state”.

Chakwera said this on Friday at a news conference when he officially rejected the result of last week’s presidential election, saying he had launched a court battle to have the vote annulled on the grounds of fraud.

The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) leader lost the election by just 159,000 votes to incumbent president Peter Mutharika, who was hurriedly sworn into office just a day after the delayed result was issued on Monday and his inauguration was taking press in Blantyre while Chakwera was addressing journalists in the capital Lilongwe.

“What we have witnessed in front of our very eyes is not an election, but daylight robbery, a crime against our decency as a people and our democracy as a nation,” he said.

He said the people who stole the election were expecting that once Mutharika  gets sworn in and  inaugurated, “their crimes will be buried, the money they have been paid will be  hidden, and we will all give up on reclaiming our stolen rights and votes while we suffer in silence for another five years.”

But Chakwera said he will fight on and “show them that it is they who are mistaken and they who are  about to be scattered.”

“This election has laid bare the corruption that has contaminated all our governance  institutions. The corruption done in this election is an indictment on all of us, whether we are citizens who have allowed it to be done in our name or foreigners who have watched it happen in our face.

“We have all colluded to create a society in which thieving is a rewarding trade, and so all of us must stand up together to fix it now,” said Chakwera.

The MCP leader said he is aware that the DPP’s “illegal ascension to the presidency”  has already started to inflict suffering on innocent Malawians.

Chakwera said the DPP administration has already started showing “the lawless acts of a mafia state”, saying it is imperative that Malawians end  “this state capture by thieves in order to end these abuses and ensure that those  committing them face the law.”

According to Chakwera, it is clear from the “rigging” of thr election that there is  struggle for Malawi to be free.

MCP last weekend had won a brief court injunction to halt the release of the results, claiming “very glaring irregularities”.

The party said that results sheets were covered in correction fluid  – Tippex – and some sheets from polling stations far apart had the same handwriting.

The injunction was lifted on Monday by High Court judge Charles Mkandawire and Mutharika was declared the winner hours later.

At his swearing-in on Tuesday, Mutharika urged opposition parties to accept the outcome, saying “they have to accept that there can only be one winner.”

Mutharika won the ballot with 38.57 percent of the vote, against Chakwera on 35.41 percent.

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